How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend (Examples: AppSumo, Mint, Chihuahuas) 399 Comments
Noah Kagan built two multi-million dollar online businesses before turning 28. He also looks great in orange. (Photo: Laughing Squid)
I first met Noah Kagan over rain and strong espressos at Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, CA. It was 2007. We were both in hoodies, had a shared penchant for the F-bomb and burritos, all of which led to a caffeine-infused mindmeld.
It would be the first of many.
The matchmaker then introducing us was the prophetic and profane Dave McClure, General Partner of 500 Start-ups, which is now headquartered just down the street from Red Rock.
Mr. Noah has quite the start-up resume.
He was employee #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint, had previously worked for Intel (where he frequently took naps under his desk), and had turned down a six-figure offer from Yahoo. Since we first met, Noah’s helped create Gambit, an online gaming payment platform and a multi-million dollar business; and AppSumo, loved by entrepreneurs and moms everywhere. He also helped pour fire on both the 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Body launches.
The purpose of this post is simple: to teach you how to get a $1,000,000 business idea off the ground in one weekend, full of specific tools and tricks that Noah has used himself.
He will be your guide…
Enter Noah
For some reason, people love to make excuses about why they haven’t created their dream business or even gotten started. This is the “wantrepreneur” epidemic, where people prevent themselves from ever actually doing the side-project they always talk about over beers. The truth of the matter is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time building the foundation for a successful business. In most cases, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple days.
We made the original product for Gambit in a weekend. “WTF?!” Yes, a weekend. In just 48 hours, some friends and I created a simple product that grew to a $1,000,000+ business within a year.
Same deal for AppSumo. We were able to build the core product in one weekend, using an outsourced team in Pakistan, for a grand total of $60.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m not opposed to you trying to build a world-changing product that requires months of fine-tuning. All I’m going to suggest is that you start with a much simpler essence of your product over the course of a weekend, rather than wasting time building something for weeks… only to discover no one wants it.
I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Noah, you are SO amazing (and handsome), but what can I do this weekend to start my own success story?”
Here are the steps you can take right now to get started on your million dollar company:
Step 1: Find your (profitable) idea.
At this stage, you are simply looking for something that people are willing to spend money on. So grab a seat and write down a list of ideas that you think might be profitable. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, try using the methods below to speed the research process along:
Review top sellers on Amazon. Find products that already have guaranteed customers, then build something complementary. A good example of this is Dodo making a gorgeous $60 case to buy for your iPad (which costs over $500, and over 5 million sold).
Think of all the things you do on a daily basis. Anything done more than once has potential for a product or service to improve the process. For me, one of those products was a mirror I could hang in the shower. It saves me tons of time while shaving, and now I don’t know how I ever lived without it.
Be cognizant of products you use and frequently complain about. Before Gambit, we were constantly asking our payment tool partners for certain features, yet our requests were always rejected. That was the impetus for us to create Gambit for our own games.
Check completed listings on eBay. This allows you to see how well certain products are selling. It’s also an easy way to measure sale prices of items and gauge the overall percentage of the market that’s receiving bids (i.e. in demand).
Look for frequent requests on Craigslist gigs. These listings are from people actively searching for someone to give their money to in exchange for particular services. Try searching for certain keywords (e.g. marketing, computers, health) and keep track of the total number of results displayed. Evaluate the most popular keywords and see if you can create a product or service around those requests.
Step 2: Find $1,000,000 worth of customers.
Now that you’ve found an idea, it’s time to assess whether there’s a big enough pool of prospective buyers. In this step, you’ll also want to ensure your market isn’t shrinking, and that it fares well compared to similar markets.
I use Google Trends, Google Insights, and Facebook ads when I’m in this part of the process. They’re great tools that help me evaluate the growth potential of my target market.
For example, let’s say you decide to build information products for owners of Chihuahuas (remember “Yo quiero Taco Bell”?). Here’s how I would check to see if there are enough customers:
1. Search Google Trends for the term “chihuahua” and other similar words (e.g. poodle, dogs) for comparison:
(Click image to expand)
We can see that the word “chihuahua” has a decent search volume (relative to “dogs”), and that “poodle” isn’t as popular. It also looks like the number of searches for “chihuahua” has been relatively stable for the last few years.
2. Double-check on Google insights:
Google Insights is great, because it breaks down the search data by location (i.e. what regions the searches are coming from), by date, and what they’re searching for (news, images, products). Click here to see the full report for the above chart.
3. Look at the total number of people available on Facebook for dogs:
3.1 million. Not bad, not bad.
And for Chihuahuas:
84,260 people. Score.
You can also see if there is a large property that you can piggyback on.
Paypal did this with eBay, AirBnb is doing it with Craigslist home listings, and AppSumo looks to the 100 million LinkedIn users. If you can find a comparable site with a large number of potential customers, you’ll be in good shape.
What helped me with finding $1,000,000 worth of customers for AppSumo was studying my successful competitors; specifically, Macheist. Their site did a Mac-only deal that generated more than $800,000. Macheist shares their sales revenue publicly, but you can use your own business acumen on the CrunchBase list to see which business you want to replicate. For instance, you might research Airbnb.com, discover that they have a profitable and growing marketplace, then decide to create a similar service for alternative verticals.
I like to create a Google Spreadsheet of the key numbers for my competitors’ businesses. Below is an example of what that might look like for Macheist in their Mac bundles. [Warning to the haters: This may not be accurate, but I used these numbers just to get a rough idea of the business’ potential.]
Step 3: Assess your customer’s value.
Once you’ve found your idea and a big pool of potential customers, you’ll need to calculate the value of those customers. For our example above, we’ll need to estimate how much a Chihuahua owner (i.e. our customer) is worth to us. This will help us determine the likelihood of them actually buying our product, and will also help with pricing. Here’s how we do that:
1. Find out how much it costs, on average, to buy a Chihuahua (about $650). This is the base cost.
2. See how much it costs to maintain a Chihuahua each year (i.e. recurring costs). Looks like it’s between $500-3,000. For this example, we’ll call it $1,000.
3. Look up their life expectancy, which is roughly 15 years. This is the number of times they’ll have to pay those recurring costs.
Therefore, a Chihuahua’s average total cost of ownership is:
[$650 + ($1,000*15)] = $15,650
Damn… you could buy a lot of burritos with that kind of cash. Silly dog owners.
In any case, these owners are already committing to spend a LOT of money on their dogs (i.e. they are valuable). After putting down $650 on the dog itself and an average of $80/month on maintenance (a.k.a. food), spending $50 on an information product that could help them train their Chihuahua–or save money, or create a better relationship between them, etc.–does not seem unreasonable. Of course, the product doesn’t have to cost $50, but we now have some perspective for later deciding on a price.
Now we need to utilize the TAM formula (a.k.a. Total Available Market formula), which will help us see our product’s potential to generate a million dollars.
Here’s the TAM formula for estimating your idea’s potential:
(Number of available customers) x (Value of each customer) = TAM
If TAM > $1,000,000, then you can start your business.
Let’s plug in some basic numbers to see the TAM for our Chihuahua information product:
(84,260 available customers) x ($50 information product) = $4,213,000
We have a winner!
Okay, obviously you are not going to reach 100% market penetration, but consider the following…
1. This is only through Facebook traffic.
2. This does not include the 5,000,000 monthly searches for “Chihuahua” on Google:
3. This is only for one breed of dog. If you find success with Chihuahuas, you can easily repeat the process many times with other dog breeds.
4. This is only for one product. It’s far easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire new ones, so once we’ve built up a decent customer base, we can make even more products to sell to them.
By all measures, it appears that we have a million dollar idea on our hands. Now we can move on to the final step!
Step 4: Validate your idea.
By now, you have successfully verified that your idea has that special million-dollar-potential. Feels good, right? Well, brace yourself — it’s time to test whether people will actually spend money on your product. In other words, is it truly commercially viable?
This step is critical. A lot of your ideas will seem great in theory, but you’ll never know if they’re going to work until you actually test your target market’s willingness to pay.
For instance, I believed AppSumo’s model would work just on gut-feeling alone, but I wasn’t 100% convinced people wanted to buy digital goods on a time-limited basis. I mean, how often do people find themselves needing a productivity tool (compared with, for instance, how often they need to eat)?
I decided to validate AppSumo’s model by finding a guaranteed product I could sell, one with its own traffic source (i.e. customers).
Because I’m a frequent Redditor and I knew they had an affordable advertising system (in addition to 3 million+ monthly users), I wanted to find a digital good that I could advertise on their site. I noticed Imgur.com was the most popular tool on Reddit for sharing images, and they offered a paid pro account option ($25/year). It was the perfect fit for my test run.
I cold-emailed the founder of Imgur, Alan Schaaf, and said that I wanted to bring him paying customers and would pay Imgur for each one. Alan is a great guy, and the idea of getting paid to receive more customers was not a tough sell 
The stage was set!
Before we started the ad campaign, I set a personal validation goal for 100 sales, which would encourage me to keep going or figure out what was wrong with our model. I decided on “100″ after looking at my time value of money. If I could arrange a deal in two hours (find, secure, and launch), I wanted to have a return of at least $300 for those two hours of work. 100 sales ($3 commission per sale) was that amount.
By the end of the campaign, we had sold more than 200 Imgur pro accounts. AppSumo.com was born.
I share this story because it illustrates an important point: You need to make small calculated bets on your ideas in order to validate them. Validation is absolutely essential for saving time and money, which will ultimately allow you to test as many of your ideas as possible.
Here are a couple methods for rapidly validating whether people will buy your product or not:
Drive traffic to a basic sales page. This is the method Tim advocates in The 4-Hour Workweek. All you need to do is set up a sales page using Unbounce or WordPress, create a few ads to run on Google and/or Facebook, then evaluate your conversion rate for ad-clicks and collecting email addresses. This is how we launched Mint.com (see one of our original sales pages here). You are not looking for people to buy; you are simply gauging interest and gathering data.
[Note: With Facebook advertising, $100 can get you roughly 100,000 people viewing your ad, and about 80 people visiting your site and potentially giving you their email addresses.]
Email 10 people you know who would want your pseudo-product, then ask them to send payment via Paypal. This might sound a bit crazy, but you’re doing it to see what the overall response is like. If a few of them send payment, great! You now have validation and can build the product (or you can refund your friends and buy them all tacos for playing along). If they don’t bite, figure out why they don’t want your product. Again, the goal is to get validation for your product, not to rip off your friends.
Of course, there are other techniques for validating your product (like Stephen Key leaving his guitar pick designs in a convenience store to see if people would try to buy them). However, I’ve found these two methods to be super efficient and effective for validating ideas online.
No need to get fancy if it does the trick.
The Final Frontier: Killing Your Inner Wantrepreneur
We made it! You officially have a $1,000,000 idea on your hands and you know for a fact that people are willing to pay for it. Now you can get started on actually building the product, creating your business, and freeing yourself from the rat race!
I can just see it… You’re all nodding and thinking, “Hey, this Noah guy is pretty snazzy!” (Sorry ladies, I’m taken.)
So, what now?
- You are inspired. Check.
- You want to do something. Check.
- You get a link to a funny YouTube video, then you open up Reddit. Check.
- Suddenly, everything you thought you were going to do goes down the drain. Check.
- You and I softly weep. Check.
I want to challenge you! Whoever generates the most profit (not just revenue) within 14 days of this article will win some fantastic goodies. First, here are the basic rules and the process:
- Contest void where prohibited.
- The business/product must be new. This means either a landing page created from scratch using Unbounce or WordPress above.
- Results and proof of some type must be submitted as a comment below no later than 1am PST Saturday on October 8, 2011. Don’t cut it too close; if a timezone misjudgment knocks you out, we can’t make exceptions.
- Put your 14-day profit number (or increase) in the FIRST line of your comment.
- Ultimately, verifiable proof with lower number beats unverifiable proof with higher number.
[NOTE: THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED. Still need help starting a business? Check out AppSumo’s “How to Make your First Dollar” course.]
The prizes:
- $1,000 credit from AppSumo.com
- Roundtrip flights to Austin, Texas to have the most delicious tacos in the world with Noah Kagan, CEO of AppSumo. Sorry, but we can only cover flights within the USA. If you want to hoof it to the US, we can then pick up from there.
- Above all: your $1,000,000 business, of course!
Don’t let this post become another feather in your Wantrepreneurship cap. Just follow the steps and start working towards your $1,000,000 business! Remember, you can start laying the foundation for your product without building anything.
All you need is one weekend.
Posted on September 24th, 2011
Related & Recommended Posts
-
Most Popular
The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now
The Art of Letting Bad Things Happen (and Weapons of Mass Distraction)
How to Travel the World with 10 Pounds or Less (Plus: How to Negotiate Convertibles and Luxury Treehouses)
How to Do The Impossible: Create a Paperless Life, Never Check Voicemail Again, Never Return Another Phone Call…
-
-
Topics
- 4-Hour Case Studies (44)
- Automation (7)
- Dance (3)
- E-mail Detox (20)
- Entrepreneurship (41)
- Filling the Void (77)
- Gadgets (14)
- Geoarbitrage (8)
- Interviews (28)
- Investing (12)
- Language (13)
- Low-Information Diet (39)
- Marketing (46)
- Mental Performance (24)
- Mini-retirements (23)
- Muse Examples (8)
- Nonsense (5)
- Opening the Kimono – OTK (4)
- Outsourcing Life (16)
- Physical Performance (37)
- Practical Philosophy (18)
- Presentations (3)
- Protecting Time (12)
- Random (19)
- Remote Offices (7)
- Rockstar Living in… (5)
- The 4-Hour Body – 4HB (39)
- The 4-Hour Chef – 4HC (35)
- The 4-Hour Chef Recipes (1)
- The Book – 4HWW (41)
- The Slow-Carb Diet (4)
- Travel (57)
- Writing and Blogging (17)
-
Tim on Facebook…
-
Tim's Photos and More
399 Comments
Anthony — September 24th, 2011, 1:39 am
AMAZING post Noah.
Maybe tim can bring you on more often.
Anthony — September 24th, 2011, 1:42 am
I just have to say it’s really one of the most valuable posts I’ve seen on here on BUSINESS.
Evernoting baybay.
Gregory C. — September 24th, 2011, 7:57 am
Agreed, AppSumo is one of my favorite new startups, they really nailed the daily deals angle.
Jay Walsh — September 24th, 2011, 1:44 am
Incredible article! For some reason, this clicks with me. Okay, enough of the Wantrepreneur, let’s see what I can come up this weekend and have running by Monday. Thanks, guys!
Banks — October 7th, 2011, 9:02 am
this here is talking about me
- You are inspired. Check.
- You want to do something. Check.
- Suddenly, everything you thought you were going to do goes down the drain. Check.
brooks — October 7th, 2011, 2:08 pm
“Wantrepreneur” FTW
Mike — September 24th, 2011, 1:59 am
Thanks for the post. I’m just beginning the process of building a business. This was the kind of inspiration I needed.
Erik Eblana — September 24th, 2011, 2:17 am
This has to be one of the best articles I’ve read on taking an idea for and enterprise to making it actually happen. Theres a lot of sound advice and practical ‘how to’s that wouldn’t go amiss in any MBA reading list.
Ive just set-up an App business in Ireland (Appnua.com) and I’ll be applying these principles today along with those I’ve learned in the 4HourWorkWeek.
Lilia — January 3rd, 2013, 1:12 pm
Agreed, unlike many other articles and posts on the subject, this post is a bit of an all-in-one (an equivalent of series of posts that take you through different tasks) and packed with practical advice that also come from someone as experienced as Noah.
Kerwin — September 24th, 2011, 2:18 am
Noah,
I’m blown away by the details here. I’m inspired to launch my products now and do some investigation on whether they are viable or not.
Will see if I can enter the competition as well.
Aaron — September 24th, 2011, 2:24 am
That was a fantastic post! Within 30 seconds of reading I got thinking of what would get in my way of completing this challenge and within a minute I had my idea. Now to light it on fire!
Brice Houghton — September 24th, 2011, 2:25 am
And I had to read this at 5:17AM on a Saturday morning…
OK, I’m up for the challenge. I have the idea. Love what I see at Shopify, Unbounce.
2 Questions to the community:
Is there a forum/discussion group for others going through the process? Looking for feedback, resources.
Any one know a Shopify-style ecommerce platform better suited for selling services? Looking for features like ability for provider/client to communicate and client feedback (rate your experience).
Off to write down a plan and create a landing page….
Tim Ferriss — September 24th, 2011, 5:44 am
Thanks for the feedback, all! Agreed that Noah did a GREAT job.
Brice, I’d encourage you to look for the Shopify forum for their build-a-business contest. I believe it’s open to the public, but if not, there’s no harm in signing up for the contest (you don’t pay for the platform for at least 14 days, unless I’m mistaken) just to get access.
Hope that helps somehow,
Tim
Derrick — September 28th, 2011, 2:39 pm
This part really caught my eye:
“We were able to build the core product in one weekend, using an outsourced team in Pakistan, for a grand total of $60″
I have seen this sort of thing come up all the time, but how does one get in contact with these sorts of programmers? I have a handful of ideas for phone apps and what not to try out, but how should I find the people in these countries that are capable of doing the work?
Does anyone have any advice on this sort of thing? It’s frustrating because I KNOW there are plenty of people in the East who have amazing skill sets with things like programming and are DESPERATE for capital, yet I with capital simply don’t know how to get in contact with them.
Tim or Noah, do you have any advice for this?
Burim — October 6th, 2011, 12:13 am
@Derrick
Try elance.com and vworker.com. You can find them there.
B.
Streets — August 13th, 2012, 11:20 am
vWorker programmers want $3,000 to start. Don’t know where this guy got his $60.00 number from…
Michael — October 23rd, 2012, 7:40 pm
Hello Tim,
Thank you for all great tools you have provided specially for promoting and testing ideas. My question to you is, how do we find number of searches on particular item or interest?
For example how did you come up with the number of dog owners and chihuahua and poodles that ultimately used it in TAM formula? could you please instruct me in details how to find out number of searches using the tools you mentioned?
Your response is greatly appreciated. I have both your wonderful books.
Michael — October 23rd, 2012, 7:52 pm
following is the questions to the previous post I had. How did you find the following total searches? it would be great when you respond to my question with instruction
3. Look at the total number of people available on Facebook for dogs:
3.1 million. Not bad, not bad.
And for Chihuahuas:
84,260 people. Score.
Jay Walsh — September 24th, 2011, 12:33 pm
Brice, you might find some answers at the Warrior Forum… just Google it.
Daniel — September 24th, 2011, 3:00 am
I’m wandering how Noah has managed to get 100000 views from Facebook for $100
I spent close to £300 and had 300 views when I ran my first test on Spine Candles… The test couldn’t even be validated because of the small size.
The best value for money came from the feature option on Etsy where my candles are listed. They charge $7 per day per category and return a fair amount of traffic. I haven’t been able to quantify it properly because of the size of organic traffic that Etsy helps to build, but I know I get interest each time I take out that option.
But FB is VERY expensive. Google ads too.
Michael J — September 25th, 2011, 11:55 am
You can get Noah’s numbers if you’re paying for “impressions” instead of “clicks”.
Patrick — September 25th, 2011, 5:18 pm
First off, when referring to views he is referring to AD views and not webpage views.
[Note: With Facebook advertising, $100 can get you roughly 100,000 people viewing your ad, and about 80 people visiting your site and potentially giving you their email addresses.]
Notice he says viewing your AD. It sounds like you are not too familiar with cpc (cost per click) vs cpm (cost per impression) advertising. Both have their place. Let me give you an idea:
I set up a simple ad with very generic targeting.
This ad targets users:
* who live in the United States
* age 18 and older
* who are not already connected to (my business facebook page)
Now with CPC a lot of people MIGHT see it (depending on my bid) and I get charged each time they click on it. Recommended bid from facebook is $2.50-$4.00 per click. Now for 80 webpage views that would cost me $200-$320.
Now let’s look at CPM. CPM I bid for 1000 people to see my ad. Facebook suggests that I bid $0.24-$0.43. So, for me to get 100,000 views, it would cost me $24-$43. Remember, you aren’t bidding per singlel impression but per 1000 impressions. Assuming you made a decent ad and have a decent website, a 0.08% conversion rate is not unreasonable.
Of course this is very generic targeting and I would recommending targeting much more specific to keep your conversion/click through rates higher and your cost per sale lower. I would definitely research CPA marketing to get a better grasp of how this works and understand that you can get some very good information/money through this method.
Azul — September 28th, 2011, 12:22 pm
Patrick Super helpful feedback!!
Jared — September 26th, 2011, 9:02 pm
I think he’s talking about impressions, not clicks. 100,000 seeing your ad goes quick and if he’s paying $.10 per thousand impressions (CPM), he’s right at $100.
Jamie — September 27th, 2011, 10:12 pm
I think that when he says 100,000 views on FB, he is referring to the number of impressions the ad is receiving on FB, not the number of clicks. My guess is that your 300 pounds purchased around 300 actual clicks on your link, and the number of impressions was actually much, much higher. This has been my experience in advertising our local brick & mortar business on FB.
Sheyi — March 21st, 2012, 5:58 am
I will surely advice you to always consider facebook ads. As per Google adwords, what do you think when an 18 y/o types a search term and sees your ad and decides to check it out.
Same thing could happen if a 50 y/o searches for same thing and sees your ads. But for facebook, its strictly your audience and the best advice after fb ads is to look into solo ads too or banner ads.
Sheyi
Evan Miller — September 24th, 2011, 3:12 am
So I have my idea, I know there is a market for it, what I’m having trouble with is getting it designed & researching manufacturing. Tis a physical product, not a web app. I feel like I’m hitting a wall on this aspect.
Will Huntley — September 24th, 2011, 3:57 am
You should look into outsourcing. Ask for information on companies that manufacture products similar to yours. You can also ask who does market research for products like yours. Good puck, Will
JP — September 24th, 2011, 5:16 am
Evan Miller,
I’m having the same trouble you are, got a great idea, great results, but I’m having trouble figuring out the manufacturing/shipping process.
I try to scan through alibaba, etc…but just can’t get to the manufacturing process.
Anyone have any ideas that can help?
John Rossini — December 28th, 2011, 12:12 pm
@JP Finding the right manufacturer/shipper depends a lot on your product type. If you have a food product, I might be able to help – john @ travelchocolate.com. For other kinds of physical products, you can get designs done at 99designs.com, and for actual small scale start up product manufacturing, try searching “furniture manufacturing in Brooklyn”. You might be able to get started there. Sites like alibaba.com are also helpful, and it seems such providers are best for only large scale production runs. I hope that helps. Thanks John R.
andrew — September 24th, 2011, 5:52 am
Evan,
Tim’s previous post (and any other “muse case study” post) features business start-ups with physical products. Most of them mention Alibaba as their manufacturer. I am sure Alibaba assists somewhat in the design. Check those posts out if you haven’t already.
seanmantel — September 25th, 2011, 4:54 am
email me: seanmantel AT gmail.com
seanmantel — September 25th, 2011, 5:03 am
Evan Miller and JP, I’m in the process now, feeling fairly comfortable with the design/manufacture process…Email me, maybe I can help.
(btw, I am NOT selling any services!)
I’m an illustration student in SF that loves creative problem solving!
Sheila — September 25th, 2011, 12:30 pm
Try elance for a designer – search for {product} designer and you might get some great results. Typically if you hook up with a great designer, they’ll have connections for manufacturing as well. You could try doing the same search on LinkedIn too.
Chris — September 25th, 2011, 6:18 pm
Find a friend to make a drawing and then you can source the manufacturing on http://www.mfg.com. Great site. You will get quotes from manufacturers from the US to China and beyond.
Chase — September 26th, 2011, 12:48 pm
Nice! The manufacturing tips here will help a lot of people, I’m sure.
Great post Tim, and good to see you replying to comments again!
-Chase
Jscott — September 25th, 2011, 9:01 pm
Look at the different muses on this site. They are often asked who they used to manufacture their product.
Also check Alibaba.
noah kagan — September 27th, 2011, 8:46 am
I’ve been hearing great things about alibaba.com to find outsource manufacturers to help prototype or build physical products in Asia.
CAnders — January 2nd, 2012, 10:11 pm
I’ve found Alibaba can be tough to sort through and minimum order quantities can be tough to meet as well as the language barriers.
If you’re still looking, check out MomCorp (http://momcorp.com). Great team over there.
**I’m not affiliated with them, but used their services in the past for a product and was really happy with the quality of the end-product and how easy the process was.
Kristian Dupont — September 24th, 2011, 3:12 am
Amazing post, really valuable details!
I’m writing from Project Getaway in Bali. We’re a bunch of entrepreneurs currently working on projects — I am going to refer the others to this as it could really help some of the new projects!
Thanks.
Hal — September 24th, 2011, 3:42 am
Great post. I was wondering how you find out the number of people available on Facebook? Sounds like a great tool to use. Thanks.
Sebastian — September 25th, 2011, 7:05 pm
I was also wondering where he got the facebook outcome from? Can anybody assist?
Mama Mia — September 27th, 2011, 8:20 pm
Hal and Sebastian, you might want to check out Facebook Ads.
Justin — October 9th, 2011, 9:44 pm
Hi Hal,
try http://www.allfacebook.com for statistics on FB
But they are referring to the facebook advertising back end/cms system which tells you how many potential customers you will have when setting up an Ad.
Simply go to setup an Ad in FB, enter your audience and demographic and they indicate the audience potential..voila.
Andrzej — September 24th, 2011, 4:14 am
Love it. Cheers Noah!
Now to the blank piece of paper and a drawing board.
Howard — September 24th, 2011, 4:17 am
Noah & Appsumo are great. Noah’s Mixergy interviews are really great too – check them out!
Wonder — September 24th, 2011, 4:18 am
Brilliant post guys! Thanks for the great tools and the even better insight. The challenge should be fun
Have lots of questions but I guess we’ll discuss it with Noah over tacos!!
¡Órale!
Allen — September 24th, 2011, 4:24 am
This is kind of convenient. We’re launching a webinar/video product next week. Basically it will go: shoot some video + powerpoint screencast -> existing newsletter list + affiliates (friends really) -> wordpress landing page on existing blog -> checkout -> wordpress plugin for membership sites. Probably two weeks of work for two people.
Helen M — September 24th, 2011, 4:34 am
This is why this website is so great – there is a generosity of spirit with regard to sharing ideas and strategy. It’s nice to see an abundance mentality. Great article with great practical advice. Thank you.
Mac — September 24th, 2011, 4:54 am
Dude, I haven’t read this article yet, but I jumped onto your site after finishing “I hope they serve beer in hell” literally 60 seconds ago — you were in the movie as the officer haha! I love that you have the courage to pursue so many of your interests, you’re definitely a source of inspiration for me. Keep rocking Tim!
Lee Bandoni — September 24th, 2011, 5:42 am
Were In,
So far we have an idea, just bought the domain and secured the Twitter/facebook names
Photoshop on the screen and Graeme is ready to code…..
Good luck people , let battle commence!
noah kagan — September 27th, 2011, 8:47 am
Bring it!
Nate Dodson — September 24th, 2011, 6:18 am
Noah is the man. I have introduced Appsumo to my entrepreneurs discussion group here in Indiana and everyones loved it.
This article will be extremely useful. Thanks guys
Anne — September 30th, 2011, 6:11 am
Dude! Where is the entrepreneurs discussion group in Indiana?
anne at charmedidentities.com
AR — September 24th, 2011, 6:33 am
Seems like naming the startup is quite important – how to find and choose a good startup name
scott — September 24th, 2011, 6:57 am
Noah, I live in Austin… You mention great burritos… where are the greatest Burritos in town?
noah kagan — September 27th, 2011, 8:48 am
The burritos in Austin aren’t as amazing as San Diego or SF but the tacos here are ridiculous. My favorite of all time are at Taco Deli, where I’ll be taking the winner
Ben Randle — September 29th, 2011, 9:00 am
Hey Noah,
Great post and amazing website Tim!
I’m an Austinite also. If Taco Deli is closed, try Torchy’s Tacos. But you probably know they’re delicious already.
Nikki RIch — September 24th, 2011, 7:34 am
Ha, new term “Wantrepreneur”. This post was full of value and I’m glad it was posted. Time to get off the bench.
LEAH — September 24th, 2011, 7:35 am
“Wantrepreneur” – love it
I read Stephen Key’s book and have a huge list of ideas… now I just need to pick one and go with it!
David Gadarian — September 24th, 2011, 7:48 am
Holy crap that was great! I’ve been an AppSumo subscriber for a while and have even purchased from that list – I guess that makes me a young sumoling! Thanks again. Dave
Emmanuel A. — September 24th, 2011, 8:02 am
Great Article. It encouraged me to start a simple landing page, similar to the first Mint page. The universe works in mysterious ways, I was coming up with ideas but with no direction on how to obtain customers prior to any product. I look forward to seeing everyone in Texas…
Sheehan — September 24th, 2011, 8:26 am
First, thank you so much for this fantastic post! I tend to think too much on the “services” side of business and those are hard to automate because they need me to work full time or more. I am amazed at some of the income people make in your 4HWW case studies. I’m also amazed at the ideas people have on the show Shark Tank and the millionaires and billionaires that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for these simple ideas. It’s phenomenal! Definitely some GREAT ideas here.
Second, under step 1 Noah mentions “On average, LinkedIn users are worth $134.” Is that a typo? Does he mean $134k? Or $134M? Just wanted to clarify. Thanks!
noah kagan — September 27th, 2011, 8:50 am
Ha. Great catch, $134,000. I think having Zuck and Bill Gates on there skews the data a bit but the audience is highly valuable.
Henry — September 24th, 2011, 8:28 am
Hi Tim and Noah,
Do we definitely have to use Unbounce? Can we create landing pages and sales page using other methods like just using wordpress and some wordpress themes?
Pls clarify on this, looking forward to start!
Henry
André Flett — September 24th, 2011, 9:22 am
It says in the article that you can use “Unbounce or WordPress above, or via the latest Shopify competition (not too late to sign up). If from Shopify, it will be your *increase* in profit over the next 14 days vs. the prior 14 days, not the *total* profit of 14 days.”
Hope that helps, Henry.
André
noah kagan — September 27th, 2011, 8:51 am
You can use any method you want. Unbounce / WordPress are nice cause they save you time to making money.
Day Break — September 24th, 2011, 8:29 am
Excellent article…now onto the million dollars.
Peter — September 24th, 2011, 8:36 am
Tim, this is quite the challenge but thank you for the motivation! I do have one question, when dealing with a product that requires manufacturing (Alibaba) how to inquire if ‘they can build it’ without giving away your idea?
Thanks! Looking forward to where this is headed.
Team Raaya — September 25th, 2011, 11:07 pm
Peter, there is no guarantee that your idea will not be copied – some of these guys are willing to sign NDAs but I don’t that helps much. Try finding a firm that has a US presence too. Happy to point you in the right direction – reachout AT raayadesign.com
Peter Weis — September 24th, 2011, 8:43 am
Tim… Just wanted to say this post is what makes your blog and posts stand above the rest. You are giving actionable steps and an outline plan based on real world examples and actual people not fake business school examples and quotes from Think and Grow Rich. Your book and recommendations have been my business school.
Thanks.
PS. And for your expresso habit, next time your in the miami area get a cuban style expresso, preferably from a place that has sketchy characters and decor of a bodega.
geoff liss — December 27th, 2011, 9:29 am
I agree, as coffee is concerned, Cuban coffees are outstanding. Would be “best” if you could id the place or places that stand out.
dotJenna (Jenna Ryan) — September 24th, 2011, 8:49 am
Very enlightening! Lots of information. I will use this in my coaching practice. Thanks!
Danny — September 24th, 2011, 9:05 am
Thanks Noah! You just motivated me to finish a product I’ve been putting off finishing. The term “wantpreneur” also reminded me of this quote from Eric Hoffer:
“There are many who find a good alibi more attractive than an achievement, for an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything, we are ‘fixed,’ so to speak for life.
Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book and not painting a picture and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.”
Anyway, you out-did yourself with this post!
Tim slechta — September 24th, 2011, 9:15 am
Fantastic post Tim and great words from Noah. I remember finding Noah’s okdork.com blog like 5 years ago when he was running a thanksgiving day business idea contest. Been following him ever since.
Being in the military, I’m searching for ways to tap into this open but highly regulated market. Maybe this weekend will be the big one!
Thanks!
Tim
Chris — September 24th, 2011, 9:44 am
Tim and Noah,
Thank you very much for this blog entry! I am definitely a wantrepreneur with, what I feel is, a great idea for a new product . I’d love to just jump into this competition (as well as the Shopify competition) and see what happens, but, as always, my biggest hang-up/fear is:
Once my idea is “out there”, what prevents more experienced and wealthy entrepreneurs from jumping all over it? I’ve never developed an idea from concept to final product and I’m sure it would take me much longer to accomplish this than an experienced entrepreneur.
Is some type of (provisional) patent my only protection? I understand the wording/description of a patent is critical and, therefore, hiring a patent attorney seem like it would be a good idea. Problem is, that’s a lot of money to spend on an idea that may never fly.
Am I missing something very simple here? Any input from you guys or your readers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again.
-Chris
Lindsey — September 25th, 2011, 10:16 am
Hey Chris! One of the comments above mentioned a book by Stephen Keys. I was intrigued and looked him up on Amazon, and turns out he wrote (what looks to be) a really great book called “One Simple Idea,” and in it he apparently does a great job discussing provisional patents. I haven’t picked up the book myself, but maybe that would be of interest to you!
Chris — September 25th, 2011, 6:40 pm
Thanks Lindsey! I’ll check this book out. Thanks again for the advice.
-Chris
Lance — October 11th, 2011, 2:23 pm
If you are thinking about “inventing” anything. Save yourself 10K and buy this book. Stephen and Tim are buddies. Enough said.
Team Raaya — September 25th, 2011, 11:10 pm
Chris,
If you really believe in your idea, just go for it in small iterative steps – prototype and keep building it. That way your investment is not wasted and you learn early. I’d rather spend that much of money in building something than paying patent attorneys!
Good luck!
Archie Cunningham — September 24th, 2011, 10:20 am
All right Tim you got me. Nice article, and a very obvious truth, all this time, I’ve been a wantrepreneur . I’ll give it a shot…
Lewis Howes — September 24th, 2011, 10:22 am
trust me… Noah knows his stuff, and the Tacos he is talking about are amazing!
Faye — September 24th, 2011, 10:33 am
Reviewing the top sellers on Amazon, I found ‘Air Swimmer Remote Control Inflatable Floating Shark’. I was laughing so much, it took about an hour before continuing the article!
Wouter Sonepouse — September 24th, 2011, 10:49 am
Really amazing and inspiring post! Even though I’m just 19 years old I am looking for great ideas and ways to start a million-euro-business (yes, million-euro-business, I live in Holland
. I’m definitly up for the contest! The only problem is finding the right product to make/buy and (re)sell.
Thanks and many regards,
Wouter Sonepouse
Michael J — September 24th, 2011, 11:01 am
I just finished the 4HWW and set a 30 day goal. Might as well set 14 day goal as well! That was an amazing article and basically a step-by-step, “build your muse and be free,” diagram.
Count me in.
Harp Kang — September 24th, 2011, 1:15 pm
Hey,
Tim that was an amazing article by Noah and certainly does deserve a round of applause. I’ve read the 4HWW and explored the blog and am really excited about creating the life style I deserve. I’ve actually been breaking the 10 commandments that you, Tim, list in the book and am very ashamed. I’ve been using money as the scapegoat 100% and is something I want to solve before the “money disease” spreads.
One of the problems I realized were that I was literally skipping the first couple chapters and jumping to automation because that’s all I was infatuated about. Quickly correcting course I found it useful to take notes on elimination to get me to destination automation.
No more being a “wantrepeneur!”
-Great Article
Tyler Kalina — September 24th, 2011, 11:20 am
Hi Tim/all,
Great post. I have a great idea for an iphone app/web site… Can anyone suggest some resources for websites or people that A. help aspiring entrepreneur’s with getting their ideas off the ground, be it guidance and/or capital. B. Suggestions for an app developer? I’m really intrigued by the “outsourced to Pakistan for $60″ plan (more info on that please) After reading this post, it really made me want to jump start my idea, the problem is, at this point I have a pretty good idea/plan but need help implementing… Any help/suggestions would be fantastic. Thanks!
Benny — September 24th, 2011, 8:37 pm
Hey Tyler,
I had my own iPhone app outsourced. I found them on Elance.com but you could also use Odesk.com. If you want to know who I used, contact me through my blog. Can help answer your questions via email.
Benny
Andrew Korf — September 24th, 2011, 11:26 am
Awesome post – cuts to the chase, this post is the missing link in Eric Reis’ lean startup mantra (http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/), Steve Blanks awesome blog (http://steveblank.com/2011/09/22/how-to-build-a-web-startup-lean-launchpad-edition/) and the excellent stuff Ash Maurya has going at Running Lean HQ (http://www.runningleanhq.com/).
I highly recommend this excellent interview with Noah on Founders Talk:
http://5by5.tv/founderstalk/15
It would be great to see this talk turned into a course on Udemy (http://www.udemy.com/).
Thanks a ton – awesome post.
Sidwyn — September 24th, 2011, 11:33 am
Can we use Goodsie instead of Shopify?
Rob — September 25th, 2011, 6:11 pm
Goodsie is sooo good. I was wondering this as well…
igor Griffiths — September 24th, 2011, 12:11 pm
What a great post you cover all the angles from coming up with the idea through pricing to final validation of the offer.
Have tweeted this and if technology is behaving this should now be safely stored in my hootsuite library.
speak soon, igor
Jim Mortensen — September 24th, 2011, 12:24 pm
The Google Insights and Facebook Ad data is invaluable. Thanks. It’s very useful for me to know that “dating” is much more popular than “internet dating”.
But what if your “business” IS funny YouTube videos? youtube.com/playbook is a great resource so far. I’m looking to drive traffic specifically to my YouTube page and to gain subscribers.
Do you know of any additional resources?
Kyle Reed — September 24th, 2011, 1:09 pm
I feel like i should be paying for all this great content. thank you for the inspiration. Time to start thinking
PJ — September 24th, 2011, 1:22 pm
Noah lost me on this statement
“I cold-emailed the founder of Imgur, Alan Schaaf, and said that I wanted to bring him paying customers and would pay Imgur for each one. Alan is a great guy, and the idea of getting paid to receive more customers was not a tough sell”
Did I miss something here? Was imgur.com getting some additional payment besides the fee paid by new customers sent via Appsumo???
Kathy — September 25th, 2011, 1:45 pm
PJ — Appsumo is like Groupon. Companies (in this example imgur.com) offer a discount through appsumo’s mailing list or website for a limited time. If enough people sign up for the discount, it’s on. So you have to get the company’s permission before advertising their discounts.
Doc Kane — September 24th, 2011, 1:43 pm
Pure Gold, here guys. Thank you! This is like a master class in actionable brainstorming! What makes it great is how Noah details the steps *between* the successes. For example, the little mention Noah makes about phoning Alan AND telling us what offer was made to him, is *exactly* the type of thing often left out in most business articles. How that leap was made from idea to reality is the stuff of new businesses, I think. Thanks Tim and Noah for a great post!
Heath Morris — September 24th, 2011, 2:55 pm
Hal,
To get to the Facebook page Noah is talking about, go to:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/
After completing step #1 “Design your Ad”, step #2 “Targeting” will give you access to the info that Noah was showing.
Best of luck!
Kirk L. — September 24th, 2011, 3:45 pm
I’m having quite a bit of trouble turning adwords traffic into sales but other than that this has been a great experience. I know my online dating business can and will work but just needs more conversions.
Tom — September 24th, 2011, 3:48 pm
Noah mentions he built the core system of appsumo in a weekend with the help of a outsourcing team from Pakistan for $60. What were they paid to do? Build a basic prototype?
Thanks
Tom
Jimmy — September 24th, 2011, 4:08 pm
Excellent post! Thanks.
Tanya @ TWIGBIG — September 24th, 2011, 4:34 pm
Tim,
I haven’t read this post yet but will get to it soon as I’m doing a sort of mind boot camp of your new version of 4HWW (which I got in a pdf, thank you for that by the way. I have this issue I can’t overcome. Hoping you and maybe some readers can help:
Take this line for example:
D: To be the boss instead of the employee; to be in charge.
NR: To be neither the boss nor the employee, but the owner. To
own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time.
Maybe this is because I’m a woman but, whenever I feel like “Yes, I can have employees and be the owner” I can’t help but think, “Well, why aren’t my employees doing the same?” or “Why am I not helping my employees do the same?” I just feel like sh*t about it. I suppose it’s a bit Kantian, but hoping you can help, because it seems to be the only thing holding me back subconsciously.
Thanks for all the great work, and best of luck for your current book my friend.
Tanya
Rob — September 28th, 2011, 8:25 am
Tanya,
1) If they are working for you and still can’t work it out…………
2) Some people don’t want to take risks or generate ideas, they like to work and complete. These also tend to be the best employees.
3) How is creating a business that employs people and helps feed, cloth and house a family something to be ashamed of?
If you want to help just make sure you create a secure business model that will also provide them with security.
Job done. Employing others is a big responsibility.
Rob.
Anne — September 30th, 2011, 6:32 am
Tanya,
As a female business owner, I have struggled with this myself. I have great relationships with my employees, and I have their best interests at heart. My housekeeper for instance is trying to grow her housekeeping business which I am helping her with. My virtual assistant just had a baby, and she is able to stay at home with the baby while working for me. It really is a win, win for everyone I employ- even the people I hire for a quick freelance gig here and there. I’m loyal to the people that are good to me, and they are loyal to me too.
You have to understand that there are a lot of people who are not cut out for small business ownership. It’s not all sunshine and roses all the time. It takes a lot of determination and dedication to make things happen, and there are plenty of folks that want to show up, earn a paycheck and go home. Small business ownership isn’t like that. It’s a different lifestyle. There are also lots of freelance companies/individuals that you can hire.
It might help you to start out hiring an established company first before hiring an individual. That way it’s closer to buying a product than hiring an individual to work for you. Start small, figure out what you are getting yourself into, and make it work.
It is incredibly liberating to have others do the work for you- you just have to let them.
)
Anne
Tyler Carter — September 24th, 2011, 4:39 pm
I feel like this is essentially a services-only competition. There’s no way I could launch a goods product in 14 days without already having an established relationship with a manufacturer who already approved the design.
Otherwise, great contest, I’m looking forward to the followup on the winners and what the losers learned in the process.
Tony — September 24th, 2011, 5:53 pm
no necessarily… you could take advance payments, and also DVD sales fulfilled by Kunaki.com are an option.
think outside the box!
Frank B — September 24th, 2011, 10:55 pm
Hey Tyler,
The idea wasn’t to actually build a product, but to gauge interest. You don’t have to build anything at all. If you get people paying you through Paypal, you can just issue them a refund, if you cannot build the product in time. But at least you’ll know you have interest in your idea that people are willing to pay for.
Frank B.
Tyler Carter — September 25th, 2011, 1:55 pm
That’s a cool idea, but how might I come up with profit, then?
Tyler Carter — September 25th, 2011, 2:06 pm
I’d make revenue, sure, but without having actually made the product, my figures on the costs to make the product would likely be unreliable.
Michael J — September 25th, 2011, 11:45 am
You might be able to do it if you were to find a product that you want to sell via http://www.WorldwideBrands.com. It doesn’t have to be a new product. It just needs to make money (and, hopefully fulfill the muse in you.)
tolo — January 17th, 2012, 8:26 pm
Sure you could. Design and build: http://www.shapeways.com/
James Brown — September 24th, 2011, 4:41 pm
What incredible insights, and a million dollar blueprint revealed here… So a huge thanks for sharing!
Looking forward to seeing the results of the competition & application of the strategies share in this article.
Best wishes to all!
Marie Haynes — September 24th, 2011, 5:08 pm
Wow, this is one of the most timely and inspiring posts I’ve read in a long time. Bookmarked! Now, to stop reading and start working on my idea!
Terry — September 24th, 2011, 7:00 pm
Not to be a downer, but I found a bit of a flaw with the chihuahua example Noah used. Most of the trends are from the city of Chihuahua, not exactly related to the dog, the market for pet owners of may be much smaller than initially thought.
Also, can anyone provide feedback on how they think this short treatise compares to something like Rob Walling’s Start Small, Stay Small? I thought Rob’s methods and examples sound more realistic than becoming instantly profitable and on track to a million dollars with 48 hours of work. It almost sounds too good to be true.
Comments? Suggestions?
Michael J — September 25th, 2011, 11:51 am
The research methodology is still valid.
The person doing the research has to validate the results. You figured it out quickly, however, someone else might have not been as sharp and only discovered this little fact later. If they followed all of the steps they still would have discovered what you found and, maybe, not moved forward.
Andre — September 25th, 2011, 11:20 pm
If you look at the long tail variations on the chihuahua keyword in the Google keyword tool, you’ll find that the overwhelming majority of them are dog related: e.g. teacup chihuahua, chihuahua breeder, chihuahua for sale, etc. The latter three, which I picked from the list at random, get 27,000, 480 and 5,400 monthly searches (exact match, which is much more conservative than the global match Noah used for the chihuahua root keyword); chihuahua mexico only gets 9,900 searches–much more than chihuahua breeder, but far less than chihuahua trainer, and in the same order of magnitude as chihuahua for sale. But the sheer number of dog related chihuahua keywords affirms that the market is pretty robust, especially considering that Noah’s TAM was four times his qualifying threshold.
Michael A. Robson — September 24th, 2011, 7:45 pm
Pretty cool, Tim and Kevin are looking for more investment opportunities, ala Lord Sugar. heh.
Frank B — September 24th, 2011, 10:57 pm
Tim & Noah, thank you for an awesome post!!
My wheels are turning now. Looking forward to entering the contest!
Cheers!
Frank B.
FBM — September 25th, 2011, 12:22 am
Another place to look for ideas to create products or services is eLance (or similar sites). Got some ideas from there myself.
Tristan Azcona — September 25th, 2011, 2:57 am
Great Post Noah!
I’m definitely following you on facebook.
I’ve been a “Wantrepreneur” for quite a while and defintely want to step out of it.
Hmm, off to the drawing board.
Ideas.. Ideas..
Daniel Lim — September 25th, 2011, 3:22 am
Awesome read! I love all your muse articles and feel extremely inspired everytime I read an article like that. I just picked up your book again. First bought it in 07 when it got published.
Have there been any major changes to the book Tim? Or does anyone know? As I’m really inspired and motivated to start my own muse. Hoping that the 4HWW book from 07 is still relevant for my reading now.
Marcin — September 25th, 2011, 7:21 am
Hi Tim and all Wantrepreneurs.
Great post from Noah, woke up again the 4HWW spirit.
I have some analitical info for you guys, hope you find this useful.
After reading 4HWW I have setup this page: http://www.playingcardcase.com.
I tried to do everything according to the book, step by step.
I did the 3 pages myself, I outsourced the 3D visualisations on Elance.
I think I can say that the total cost was 100$.
So here are some statistics:
7 months
1st or 2nd page in google for term: “playing card case”
No adwords, no advertising
150 visits
10 emails (wanting to order)
The only WRONG thing I did was to assume that 5400 searches for my term (taken from google keyword tool) would be enough to make this profitable.
My lesson for this: Aim at tens or hundreds of thousands not at thousands.
I hope this will help you guys. Cause to be honest I would love to read more comments like the one I just wrote:)
Austin E. Alexander — September 25th, 2011, 7:10 pm
Hi Tony,
Great site, great product but there is a typo under Tony, NY’s review. e.g companing. Thought i’d let you know.
Best wishes,
Austin A
Marcin — September 27th, 2011, 1:46 pm
Thanks for the correction. I would love to say that it didn’t sell becasue of that:)
Although research showed that adwords ads with a spelling mistake get more clicks than correct ones:)
Daniel Lim — September 25th, 2011, 10:09 pm
Dear Marcin!
The card case concept you came up with is super cool. I’ve always wanted to do something similar. Could I ask something though, how did you source for a manufacturer for a product like that? I’ve tried looking for manufacturers but in my country (Singapore), manufacturing costs are high, and I don’t have enough capital to fly to a cheaper country (China for example) to source for manufacturers.
Could you point me in the right direction?
And also, did you launch the website before the final product was made? Or was your entire product line out before you launched the website?
Marcin — September 26th, 2011, 2:18 pm
Daniel,
I did not arrange the phisical product. If you read the book first you should test the idea, and thats what I did. And as you can see making real product would be a waste of resources and time. S. test first, themn manufacture.
Andre — September 25th, 2011, 11:56 pm
You have a different problem–you based your search traffic on the wrong match type. Right now the Google keyword tool only shows 3,600 local monthly searches and 4,400 global for *broad* match, not exact match. This means that every Google search containing the terms “playing,” “card” and “case” in it is counted. There are only 58 searches a month on exact match, so if you were getting ~20 search visits a month (assuming they’re actually search visits), you should check your analytics to see which keywords are making up your traffic. Since you would only get about 25 search visits for “playing card case” if you were #1 for it in Google (the top spot gets about 42% of all the search traffic), it’s a safe bet that there are other long tails involved–some people might have searched “plastic playing card cases,” for example.
“Business card case,” on the other hand, gets 3,600 local searches on *exact match*. If you ranked #1 in Google for that keyword and sold a $37 product for it at a 2% conversion rate, you’d make ~$1100 a month. But getting to #1 in the serps would take a lot of link building, and PPC would probably wipe out your gross earnings.
Marcin — September 26th, 2011, 2:23 pm
Yes, I know it now. But it was still great learning expierience. I have few more ideas lined up, will keep you posted with some more stats. Because statistics is what we all need to stop dreaming and start doing some work with the good ideas we all have in our heads.
Ryan — September 26th, 2011, 4:39 pm
Marcin:
First and foremost cool product. Have you put much thought into your price point?
I like the idea, but at $37.00, I can buy several decks of playing cards. I’m just trying to think of the benefits at that price point. I wonder if there’s a market for cards people would want to protect, such as Pokeman style or whatever.
Marcin — September 27th, 2011, 1:40 pm
I was lowering the price every month by 10 $. I stopped at 37 otherwise it wouldn’t make a profit.
Targeting a niche might be a good idea, but if it didn’t work on a broad audience I cannot see it succeeding on smaller one.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Oh, and here is interesting statistic:
Link in a comment on Tim’s blog brings 100 visits a day
Charlie — September 27th, 2011, 8:19 pm
Marcin,
I’m sorry to hear that the muse didn’t turn out to be profitable for you, but I have to say I love your site! I am currently working on a muse of my own and am getting a good amount of traffic and interest, but I think I’m being held back because of a cluttered/confusing landing page.
If you don’t mind sharing, what tools did you use to build your site? The layout and checkout is really professional and confidence inspiring and I’d love to try and create a similar aesthetic on my site.
Keep on keepin on
Charlie
Marcin — September 29th, 2011, 1:04 pm
Charlie,
I’m fortunate enough to be webdesigner myself, so the pages you saw were designed and developed by myself.
What kind of traffic/sales are you getting? If it’s high enough then definitely redesign will help a lot in conversions.
Charlie — September 30th, 2011, 10:09 am
Well then, fantastic job with the design! Do you have any other websites you designed I could take a look at?
We’re getting approximately 60 visits a day and 15 of them proceed to our price page. When we originally tested the product, we had probably a third of that number due to low AdWords budget, but were still averaging a sale a day (as measured by inputs into the shipping info field on the price page) at 40 bucks – the same price we have now.
Our hypothesis is that people prefer to pay on-site rather than through paypal’s portal. It seems like your multi-step checkout process would be great for customer trust. Is that a 3rd party checkout cart or something that you set up yourself?
Espree — October 5th, 2011, 11:59 pm
Your site looks awesome, truly.
tolo — January 17th, 2012, 8:30 pm
I love the product but my laptop, Ipad, tablet won’t fit into the case…. All my card games these days are either on the machines or online..
Jeroen — September 25th, 2011, 8:37 am
Well, See you in Austin for the taco’s Noah!!
Great process and inspiration to get going!
Thanks!
Mike Everett — September 25th, 2011, 8:52 am
Noah or Tim ~
GREAT post! Mucho thanko!
Specific question: In step 2, item 3, you say to “Look at the total number of people available on Facebook for Dogs.”
I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that, but to no avail. Any tips?
Michael J — September 25th, 2011, 11:38 am
You can find this info by setting up a Facebook Ad campaign. Just go to your Facebook profile page, scroll tom the very bottom of the screen and click the link that says, “Advertising”.
On the right side of the screen you will see a green button that says, “Create an Ad”.
Go ahead and create an Ad. You don’t get charged until AFTER you set up everything. At that point you can either save the ad for later use or just delete it.
Facebook collects all kinds of demographics, that Facebook users willingly provide, that you can explore. Just play around. It’s fun, inspiring, and educational.
Mike Everett — September 25th, 2011, 8:54 am
P.S. http://www.Wantrepreneur.com is already taken, much to my dismay…
Brian Schmitt — September 25th, 2011, 8:58 am
We just completed did this at a Wizard Academy event called “How to Make Awesome Sauce” See this article: Launching a new business: Going from concept to revenues in just 72 hours-
We are working towards our $1MM business!
Lindsey — September 25th, 2011, 10:25 am
I’ve got a question to all you techies out there!
I’ve got an idea for a website that would have a similar format to, say, a dating website (users would create profiles, and other users could visit those profiles by searching for specific keywords or browsing). Someone mentioned using Elance and oDesk to find developers, which is a great idea, but here’s my question:
What knowledge/expertise should I be looking for in a web developer? I know there’s a lot of different codes to build websites, but I don’t know what kind of code proficiencies I’m looking for in a developer. Does that make sense? (I’m so ignorant of all that stuff I’m not sure if I’m using correct terms, haha
Great comments so far! Thanks in advance for your help!
Helen — October 4th, 2011, 2:29 pm
Hi Lindsey,
With Elance I tend to find that it’s best to look through their portfolio to see if they have completed similar projects.
Most of the sites I’ve built tend to be PHP and MySQL sites but if it doesn’t matter to you what they build it in then any web development language is fine. So long as they are proficient in one area thats the main thing. I think with a social networking site you want to look at the quality of design, style, graphics, so same as before, go to their portfolio, test out their sites for real. If you like the finished product it doesn’t matter what coding is behind the scenes.
If you are creating a social network in the usual sense there are sites where you can pay per month and use their existing software and customise it for your own brand. It’s a lot cheaper than hiring a developer. Just do a search for Social Network Software (i.e SproutSocial, rSitez)
Hope that helps.
Levi — December 4th, 2011, 9:36 pm
Helen,
It sounds like you have done a couple of social networks. I am currently working on getting one built. I have a couple of questions about this as it is my first time building one. Could I pick your brain?
Ellery — September 25th, 2011, 10:42 am
Thanks for this really excellent interview. It is Brilliant!
Now I have a question on the “Testing” part: in Step 4 Noah tested if his idea (AppSumo) works by putting up an ad for Imgur.com.
According to my understanding, AppSumo and Imgur.com are not the same thing. But Noah’s logic is that: if I can sell Imgur.com service as an affiliate and make 100 sales, I can sell AppSumo.
But those two services are different! Why will he assume the result from Imgur.com as a success of AppSumo?
This paragraph confused me a lot:
“I cold-emailed the founder of Imgur, Alan Schaaf, and said that I wanted to bring him paying customers and would pay Imgur for each one. Alan is a great guy, and the idea of getting paid to receive more customers was not a tough sell
The stage was set!
Before we started the ad campaign, I set a personal validation goal for 100 sales, which would encourage me to keep going or figure out what was wrong with our model. I decided on “100? after looking at my time value of money. If I could arrange a deal in two hours (find, secure, and launch), I wanted to have a return of at least $300 for those two hours of work. 100 sales ($3 commission per sale) was that amount.
By the end of the campaign, we had sold more than 200 Imgur pro accounts. AppSumo.com was born.”
I am not trying to over-think this part, because I don’t understand what he mean!
So Tim, would you mind please explain to us what Noah did here?
Thank you.
Mike — September 26th, 2011, 7:37 pm
To Ellery:
It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about, too. If I understand correctly, Noah asked permission to sell the pro membership’s for Imgur.com. AppSumo is similar to groupon, they need a service to sell. Noah promised to pay him for sending him paying customers because people were going to pay upfront (like groupon) for discounted pro memberships. Noah just needed permission to do this.
Hope that helps,
Mike
Mat — September 25th, 2011, 11:03 am
Great article by Noah. Tim, obviously you are passionate about fitness and sports performance as am I. I have an idea that will make training using exercises such as Rear Foot Elevated Split Squats, Step ups, Box Squats, Dips, Push ups, and more, much easier to set up and more precise and effective for any individual.
chronic optimist — September 25th, 2011, 11:18 am
A very interesting article. Indeed.
I would like to stress that, . I have been using Timothy Ferris’s book for over a year and a half, the four hour work week.
Regardless what you want to do success is denoted by motivation. Simple as that. accepting the fact that you are going to fail, means that you are going to succeed. And of course if you increase your knowledge, experience, and read a lot. then your chances of succeeding quicker grow.
Nevertheless, having motivation is by far key. Getting up and accepting the blows of life, . As well as being emotionally competent. And actually just getting a little bit angry with life and grabbing it by the collar, so you can achieve what you want.
charlie fang — September 25th, 2011, 11:24 am
Great presentation from Noah Kagan! I am so intrigued by his wit and intelligence that I did a search on YouTube. Wow, what I found is going to bring me many hours’ fun watching. By the way, is this presentation video taped? I wish it was as I am a visual person I absorb better with help of pictures or videos. A suggestion, I m just saying.
Thanks, Tim for bringing this material we can all learn from.
Jason Tugman — September 25th, 2011, 1:23 pm
This is a great article. Thanks to Noah for all the great info!
My question to Noah is, if your goal was to sell 100 Pro accounts and you wanted to make $300 how much did you spend on advertising? I know that FB and reddit ads are ‘affordable’ but they still cost $$.
On average a reddit add costs about $70/day. Did you run the add for more than 3 days?
Matt Asitfan — September 25th, 2011, 6:10 pm
Yea I was thinking that too however I don’t think it matters if it costs him $300 to sell the first 100 units. I believe he was only validating the idea of users buying software on a time constraint, saving him future time and money on product development. Plus, LTV of each customer he acquires is probably more than $3 anyways (if he proceeds with the business model). For example, I heard Groupon was paying between $5-15 to affiliates per “opt-in only” when they first launched.
Pivotr Mag — September 25th, 2011, 2:29 pm
another place to look for ideas is the all time sales page on flippa. lots of ideas to spin from there.
Mel Richards — September 25th, 2011, 2:58 pm
Maybe I missed something, but I don’t get what Noah’s deal that was made with Alan, the owner of imgur.com, was all about? Did he convince him to sell him the app at a discount if he found him customers (300) and thus made $3/customer = $300 by advertising his app? So he was basically just an affiliate? Is that it?
I think I’m missing something here… seems to basic.
Helen — October 6th, 2011, 2:23 pm
As far as I am aware AppSumo sent Imgur something like $7 for every sale of Imgur pro they made.
So like Groupon, AppSumo got the bulk of the profit & Imgur just got $7 per sale.
What confuses me, is why Imgur would see this as a really good deal on their part. Surely it would be more worthwhile to do their own discount and keep a higher profit? I guess because it’s a digital product then maybe volume of sales counts more than overall price paid.
It’s interesting when things like this come up. Good to see behind the scenes!
Allain — September 25th, 2011, 7:32 pm
Thanks Tim and Noah
rambob — September 25th, 2011, 8:20 pm
This is all fine and good for people trying to make a buck off the internet by riding coatttails, but its Greek to everyone else.
True innovation often seems to get swamped by people who are so eager to jump at the the latest development for personal gain…
Julio E. Peironcely (@peyron) — September 25th, 2011, 11:23 pm
What makes this post great is that it is actionable, which is quite hard to find. Thanks for providing useful content.
Denise Duffield-Thomas — September 26th, 2011, 12:50 am
Fantastic article guys – thanks for such actionable steps and a great competition.
Everytime I see wantapreneur, I see wank-apreneur – which I guess amounts to the same thing right?
Jeffrey — September 26th, 2011, 12:59 am
Quick recap, I started a “muse” several years ago, I don’t even promote the product much anymore. But yesterday I had my best sales day since I opened up shop (not including day 1 because I had pre-sold).
GF and I have another muse and we’re on track to trend this month.
Several weeks ago, I got the random idea to put together an ebook to help noobs do what we were doing with the 2nd muse. Thanks for posting this blog, it was the kick in the rear I needed to get going. So in the past day, I’ve written the ebook, she’s proof-read it, and I need a couple more eyes to look it over because my writing is unbelievable.
Using the step-by-step in the blogpost here, I’ve got my website up, needs a few tweaks, and tomorrow will set up the google and facebook campaigns. I’ve never done either campaigns, I’m a bit nervous and scared. We’ve decided on how much we’ll spend advertising, so we’ll see where it takes us.
Here’s the website, looks amateur, but I hope people get the idea: we’re amateurs and we’re successful, so we want to help you too. http://www.etsyplain.com/
Thanks Tim!
Dr J
Jouvan Johnson — September 26th, 2011, 1:03 am
Loved that post… exactly what I needed at the right time so happy I came across it.. bookmarked
Patrick Stiles — September 26th, 2011, 1:27 am
Mmmmmm tacos
James Slater — September 26th, 2011, 2:29 am
Not bad, a few new methods to consider.
The problem is, it could easily take more than a weekend to come up with the initial idea.
That can be the most difficult part. The rest is all straightforward.
Not Offline — September 26th, 2011, 5:50 am
This is a fantastic read. I wasn’t bored through it and it’s pretty much inspirational
The challenge is a nice call for wantrepreneurs. Go boys and girls! Let’s make millions!
Zara — September 26th, 2011, 5:59 am
I agree, that is a great post. I have just tried a few ideas and put them into Google Trends and Google Inside for my two ‘cheap’ ideas but nothing came up as there was not enough activity, maybe my idea is not such a good idea after all……(input appreciated). Should I still try to sell my idea?
I am attending the Canton Fair next month in China as I live in HK and hope to find an idea/s there too.
Finding the initial idea is definitely the hardest part, I know once I have my muse everything else will fall into place.
Dan — September 26th, 2011, 6:21 am
Hi Tim,
I just wanted to let you know I freak’n did it man! As of Friday I got the go ahead to work remotely from Australia (dialling into the UK) and a pay rise to boot. I’m a new dad so ecstatic is an understatement
All the best and thanks for the inspiration.
Dan
Ben — September 26th, 2011, 8:26 am
I’m impressed, clear and powerfull!
thanks
Peter Lawlor — September 26th, 2011, 9:11 am
Tim, I’m glad to see you’re posting fundamental business-related posts again. This is an exceptional post with concrete tips and steps for developing a muse.
Did you coin “wantrepreneur?” Nice.
Your best point in the post is that a new product need not be comprehensive, but instead start with the essence of the product and build from there. I’m all about starting with good enough and improving along the way. This mindset helps me take action.
Marc Dugas — September 26th, 2011, 9:40 am
I can personally vouch to the deliciousness of Noah’s tacos.
Rodrigo Langeani — September 26th, 2011, 10:25 am
Awesome article! I`ve never read an article about creating a business so complete.
Thanks for sharing!
Jeff Nabers — September 26th, 2011, 10:30 am
This may be the most valuable post EVER on this 4HWW blog!
Noah, thanks for the awesome info; Tim, thanks for hooking it up
Peter Lopez — September 26th, 2011, 1:13 pm
Great post guys,
I am moving forward with my idea.
Tim,
I need an actual product manufactured and at some point shipped etc so any help for support on that end would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Tulio — September 26th, 2011, 1:33 pm
Never saw such an actionable post from such an experienced and well known person. Kudos to Noah and Tim!
Ron! — September 26th, 2011, 1:53 pm
Noah, Tim thanks for the motivation – I’m on this and will post my numbers in two weeks!!! Thanks again!
Brian Jenkins — September 26th, 2011, 2:21 pm
I’m in the race!!! I’m travelling in Vietnam currently using Tim’s strategies and have created a new ‘Muse’ – Virtual Assistants. I am training new VAs in Asia and for $4 an Hour I can set you up with your own personal virtual assistant.
Anything’s possible, live universal.
-Cheers!!
Scott — September 26th, 2011, 3:00 pm
Great information, especially for someone just trying to figure out where to go once they have an idea – which has always been my problem!
Great comments too!
James — September 26th, 2011, 3:38 pm
Awesome blog post!
Anyone want to team up on this and win the challenge???
I’m really savvy with SEO, WordPress, Facebook ads, Google Analytics, conversions, etc.
Zachary — September 28th, 2011, 12:35 pm
I’d be interested to hear about what products you had in mind.
James — September 29th, 2011, 2:04 pm
Hey Zachary were you talking to me?
Mark Hallam — September 29th, 2011, 4:04 am
I have an idea and will partner with you.
James — September 29th, 2011, 2:03 pm
Ok Mark I just emailed you. Let’s figure something out and rock it!
Zachary — September 29th, 2011, 2:10 pm
James, Yeah. Shoot me an email and let’s get something rolling.
blendahtom — October 6th, 2011, 3:19 am
Hi James
Look at my submission below. We should chat!
tom @ racecrowds.com
RobM — September 26th, 2011, 6:11 pm
I would also like some more info on outsourcing the website to Pakistan for $60….
Adam Schneller Nolan — September 26th, 2011, 7:58 pm
Hey guys… just wanted to show the proof that we have so far from creating & launching this product.
So far we’ve made just over $23,000.00 in a week. Here are the income proof screenshots: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5948676/income2.png
We did this with launching a product on how to create sales funnels to people interested in internet marketing. The website for the product (which we’re closing tomorrow – it was a 7 day sale) is http://www.ultimatesalesfunnel.net
We’ll be continuing to promote the product through different mediums until the end of the competition & we’ll post updates then.
Cheers & wish us luck!
-Adam & Russ
Ryan Bradley — September 26th, 2011, 8:07 pm
This is truly inspiring, I’ll make sure to email you when I get my million dollar company over the weekend.
Justin — September 26th, 2011, 8:23 pm
Seeya in TX, Noah!
Amar — September 26th, 2011, 10:35 pm
Hey Guys,
I’ve seen this question listed a couple of times above but not answered. Noah says he got his test site coded for about $60 in Pakistan. How did you find them and what language did they code in. I have an idea for web app but don’t how to create a simple version to test it.
Thanks
Trevor — September 27th, 2011, 6:17 pm
Great question, I was wondering the same thing. Where would I find someone to code for $60?
Lexie — January 10th, 2012, 1:33 pm
Late reply i know, but you can find coders for that price on elance. I had a great coder from Bangladesh take my design from psd to joomla template for $100. and he was quite pleasant to work with as well.
Kelli — September 26th, 2011, 10:42 pm
Very inspiring – thank you not only for the motivation to pull this off, but the tools to get it done. It’s alway so nice to see inside the mind and success of someone like Tim.
Aaron — September 26th, 2011, 11:28 pm
Great post, the specific actions detailed really help push past emotional inspiration to actual action — and will lead to the death of the my “Wantrepreneur”. I also wanted to give a quick shout to Noah, this post was the first time realized that he is the owner of AppSumo etc. But when I had problems with delivery of a product purchased there Noah personally went to great lengths to make certain I was a satisfied customer, without ever letting on that he was indeed the owner. One of the best consumer interactions I have ever had (and led to more purchases as well). Thanks Noah and Tim for the great information and service!
Jake Davis — September 26th, 2011, 11:54 pm
Tim, where do you keep finding these pieces of gold. I’ve still been working on that $100million product that I can turn into an app. I’m in the process of building the 1st model, re-coding my muse, and setting my goals through the roof. This idea is getting a lot of positive re-enforcement and has advanced several times to really blow away the competition. With a $3billion market, I am confident that this idea will brand, sell, and be able to produce upgraded models or versions every year. if been in a contest with myself for years and the finish line is getting closer and closer with every passing day acquiring new knowledge from such great posts like this one. I still haven’t given up nor will I ever. I need you to work on this idea time ill go 50/50 with you and will donate $500 to your charity for a 10minute phone call.
I have the ideas and all the means to connect the dots. I want you to fund this venture because its right up your alley in every way.
Let me know Tim and thanks again, we need more people like you in this world giving society a helping hand. I need to show you what you inspired me to do build.
Phil Tozer — September 27th, 2011, 1:00 am
Hi Noah & Tim
Your both nearly as annoying as the guy (Dan Wardrope) who sent me to look at your action taking energy… just kidding about the annoying (read inspiring, encouraging & very helpful).
Dan has a site about being Lazy. He then proceeds to be the least lazy person I’ve met! He keeps moving me into that place where I can’t be a successful wantrepreneur!
I’ll report back on Monday.
Cheers Phil Tozer
Dustin — September 27th, 2011, 1:15 am
WOW, you just dropped some bombs on us right here. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more intriguing than this, and at this point in my life. THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Wayne Mullins — September 27th, 2011, 7:02 am
Thanks Tim & Noah!
Truly inspiring. Now it’s time to turn the inspiration into perspiration – and take action.
Joel Bard — September 27th, 2011, 9:10 am
Thanks for the insight! Quite helpful. I have a couple of followup questions.
1) My potential business would need a substantial number of users to be appealing. It would also be Farmville-esque in that the basic service is free, but the revenue would come from selling digital goodies and add-ons to users who are already hooked. How can I market test something like that?
2) I like to think my idea is revolutionary and pretty unique. It’s also pretty easily duplicatable. How can I do market research without worrying about thieves?
Any advice from y’all “if-you-got-it-then-flauntrepreneurs” would be appreciated.
Jessica — September 27th, 2011, 4:25 pm
I just saw this and want to do this contest so bad because I AM a “wantrepreneur”!
My problem is – I can’t think of a “good” idea! I’m not technically savvy like creating apps or anything. I would love more of an online business, not a product based business. I am intermediate with SEO, have experience in creating websites (from a sitebuilder, not from scratch) and have scowered the sites Noah discusses to help come up with a business idea and can’t come up with a good idea!
Can someone help me please!
Trevor — September 27th, 2011, 6:13 pm
Excellent post, and very timely. After shooting a promo video for my newest venture (5k obstacle course) this weekend, I will be testing the principals discussed. You can never have too many things going, right?
Josh Ledgard — September 27th, 2011, 11:06 pm
Love this post, Tim, and Noah! Great summary. The Appsumo deal is an easy sell to any new entrepreneur. I’d recommend everyone reach out to them once you have a product. We took advantage for KickoffLabs.
There are also cheap products available to make the landing DIY, fast, and viral in order to validate your idea. Ours is just one of the competitors out there, but we happen to be the best… and we have an AppSumo deal:
http://appsumo.com/kickofflabs-promo/
Brian — September 28th, 2011, 3:04 am
GREAT POST!! I’m in the race, see you at the top! “just do it”
Matt — September 28th, 2011, 5:50 am
Tim,
Great post, I am currently sending out requests for a prototype of my muse. I really want to enter the Shopify competition within the next month, but I’m not sure if they offer drop shipping, can you provide an insight to this?
Shawn — September 28th, 2011, 6:50 am
For those of you that have come up with new products and subsequently had someone manufacture them, how did you protect your idea/product from being stolen? Thanks!
Mark Stoner — September 28th, 2011, 11:27 am
I have tried some of these techniques with my business. Not all of them apply, but interesting to think about nonetheless.
Jeffrey — September 28th, 2011, 11:39 am
Hi Tim, quick update. Finished the website, called Google to help set up an adwords campaign. Nice outsourcing, free too. But the keywords they picked, I don’t feel they’re that good. So I tweaked it, and waiting 24hours to see what happens. Would like a crash course on adwords.
Next plan is to try facebook ads. So far, something like 35 views on my website, but nobody buying. 2 weeks, when does the competition end again? Oct 8?
Dr J
clearlycrystal — September 28th, 2011, 11:56 am
Thanks Tim and Noah. I’m working on living my dreams. I have a goal and it is written down. I work it daily.
Brian Seelos — September 28th, 2011, 12:14 pm
This was a great post. As soon as I got done reading it, I set up a landing page on Unbounce, and put ads up on Google AdWords and Facebook. It took literally a few hours. We”ll see how it goes. It’s exciting though.
Zachary — September 28th, 2011, 12:33 pm
Amazing post Noah.
Thank you Tim and Noah for the insight.
I look forward to testing this out with a new product and getting something going in the next few days.
Best of luck to all in this competition!
Scott Nelmin — September 28th, 2011, 1:27 pm
Its on! I do not have a product. Just an idea and a quick deadline. This fits good with the 4HWW: Big dream, short deadline. Can’t wait to see the results of this challenge. Thanks Noah and Tim
adrian — September 28th, 2011, 3:28 pm
i applaud the post and efforts of this contest – i almost jumped in and set up a “muse” with one of my “products.” but we’re trying to grow our current business much more slowly – in my opinion, it seems that when things are grown slowly, they have higher long term sustainability. we’re able to build relationships with customers, get feedback, and help feed hungry kids good food along the way. when you rush for that illusive $1 million dollars, sure there will be a few who make it, but the rest are unsustainable ventures built in a weekend.
i understand the prodding and how it’s helping people to take action – i just think their needs to be caution when thinking about how to realistically grow a business.
may the winds prevail for you all.
adrian
founder, head yumologist
yumbutter
Mike Johnson — September 28th, 2011, 7:43 pm
I stumbled across Tim’s the 4 Hour Body in a crazy way, I was looking at Impresso, the company which did the landing pages for him to help sell his book online. I decided to see what it was about. Turns out I was able to stumble onto the single best blog post I have read all year.
Excellent content here. I am not in the Million dollar business yet, but I expect to clear just over $400,000 this year with 5 projects in the pipeline alone with ideas that are way too big.
Seeing this gives me hope that I am not far from where I want to be.
Thanks for a great value added resource Tim and and first rate article Noah. I would love to compete but I think I might have stumbled on this a little too late.
Mike
Zachary — September 29th, 2011, 2:00 pm
One of my first web ideas was http://www.dreaddit.com. With over 8 Million people on facebook begging for a dislike button, Google searches around 250,000/month I thought it could be an interesting project.
Biggest problem; No product to sell. My business model was to receive traffic and sell ad space. As of right now.. It just didn’t bring in enough revenue.
My biggest lesson; To create an actual transaction from your customer. Whether you are selling a product or service. And after reading 4HWW I definitely think products are the easiest way to go.
Let’s rock the competition.
blendahtom — October 6th, 2011, 3:40 am
“Dislike button” Tshirts, stickers etc..using zazzle or similar platform!
Alan Barnes — September 29th, 2011, 12:16 am
Just wondering, can Shopify be used to sell information products?
Marcin — September 29th, 2011, 6:41 am
Quick update from me.
I used one more factor for my advantage.
Google trends.
There is listeria ourbreak now in Colorado.
So I made a test landing page for a guide how to protect yourself from that poisoning.
I thought it’s a great idea:)
So results after 5 hours:
Facebook:
23 $ spent on facebook ads. 60000 impressions, 19 clicks. No sale.
Google adwords:
Site supended after few minutes due to landing page policy. So be careful.
I have only 27 $ left to test this one, but it;s not looking good, eventho the landing page looks great for me, and the huge buzz about the outbreak.
So again, not as easy as it seems, and I would love to have more money to spend on facebook ads to test it properly.
And to answer your future question: No, I don’t have the guide written:) If I get orders to cover the ads then I will write it. If I get less, I will refund money with some excuse.
So as you can see I’m quick in setting up test pages that look good, I’m not even too bad in ideas, but I’m not great in funds:) Anyone wants to team up?…
Marcin — September 30th, 2011, 4:54 am
Ok, update again.
50$ gone. 24 clicks, no sale.
Obviously to test it you would need few hundred visits and then test the converssions.
Next muse test starts tonight:)
James — October 2nd, 2011, 9:27 am
Hey just an idea…
Most people go AD > WEBSITE and get very low conversion rates.
Have you tried AD > SQUEEZE PAGE > EMAIL LIST > AUTO-RESPONDER WITH SALES PAGE?
When you give first, accept their email in return, and then present a sales page your conversion rate will increase dramatically.
Simon Wong — September 29th, 2011, 6:08 pm
I’m going to try this out. Good luck to everyone.
John M — September 30th, 2011, 9:02 am
While this contest may be out of my reach (I only started last night), I do want thank Noah for a great article that was the final the straw that made me get off my duff. I bought webspace several months ago and have been periodically kicking around a prototype for at least several weeks now. I’d get hung up on little things until calling it quits for a given night and then let myself back burner it. This finally made me say screw it, it won’t be perfect but it’ll be out there trying to find someone who’s interested!
Something we’ve all heard before but I caught again viewing a TechStars excerpt Tim did. Ideas aren’t as important as action. I definitely have the problem of avoiding sharing ideas because they’ll somehow be less valuable by sharing. But I’ve decided to work toward a mentality of looking for people to share ideas with because theres a change either a) I’ll find likeminded people to walk the path with or b) someone will make a go of something I haven’t/won’t act on. Fear of the latter I think keeps us from finding the former. I don’t want to be like that anymore.
Good luck, folks. And remember: action action action!
Leonard — September 30th, 2011, 2:15 pm
How do you check Facebook’s total reach on a specific term?
Scott A — October 1st, 2011, 3:16 pm
This article motivated me to finish and launch my idea, http://rentadoo.com. All I had was a basic prototype started but I busted my ass over the last couple days and got it out the door. I can officially say I’m not a wantrepreneur anymore.
Thank you Noah and Tim for the amazing article. More importantly thanks for motivating us and encouraging us to follow through. Everyone has an idea but the important part is executing your idea.
Tim, if you’re reading this, you would be the perfect seed round investor for my startup, just saying. Hit me up if you’re interested.
mc — October 30th, 2011, 5:12 pm
Scott A – I have a similar idea and it would be helpful to see who / how you created your website. Would you be willing to assist ? thx
Scott A — October 31st, 2011, 8:40 pm
mc – I built the site from scratch. Shoot me an email and we can talk more, rentadooapp[at]gmail.com.
david — October 1st, 2011, 11:51 pm
Outsourced the coding for 60$? I need the information how to do that!
TreyJ — October 2nd, 2011, 6:58 am
Re: How to outsource the code for $60.
I’ve used Scriptlance and Elance for small coding/ web design projects – less than a $1000. Both sites allow you to specify what you need to have done and programmers and web designers from around the world can bid on your project.
James — October 2nd, 2011, 9:21 am
http://www.elance.com for outsourcing web projects.
Now is not the time to outsource.
If your idea can generate $500 per day, and you wait 4 days to outsource instead of just getting it done, you just lost $2,000.
For the sake of the contest, I’d just get started ASAP.
If you have a good idea and just need web pages, I’ll build them for you for no cost, if you hook me up on the back end with a percentage. I also build squeeze pages and ad campaigns for traffic.
Max — January 25th, 2012, 3:05 am
Hey James, just read your comment. What’s your email? I might have a job for ya.
Thanks!
Edward Steele — January 25th, 2012, 1:04 pm
Hello and Good day
James could you provide me with your contact information (Email). I am more then willing to run some ideas by you and provide with a split. I believe a split is more then fair in this situation. I look forward to hearing from you .
Good Day
Edward
James — October 2nd, 2011, 9:29 am
… Plus you could just use http://www.kajabi.com and build an entire funnel of web pages, store your info product, add / remove members etc.
If I was in a hurry, or even if I wasn’t, Kajabi is what the above example (that made $23,000 in a week) is using.
If you purchased it right now, you could have you entire web page funnel up and going in about an hour or two.
Amar — October 2nd, 2011, 1:23 am
Re: David
This question has been asked many times, with no answer. Anybody?
Bob — October 2nd, 2011, 8:09 am
HELP! I’ve been a long time 4HWW follower and have launched many online businesses – but have not hit the “big one” yet…
Noah’s post was great! It took me until Monday to find the business need. Lots of Google searches and Craigslist gigs led to me to my idea.
I launched it on Friday and it has huge potential with it’s business model. Best of all, it is automated…
However, I need serious help generating traffic. I’m seeing decent results with PPC but that is not going to get close to winning this contest in 6 days.
Anyone have any ideas to help generate traffic or want to partner?
Target market is bloggers or small businesses who want to blog.
Thanks!
Bob
James — October 2nd, 2011, 11:33 am
I’ll help with traffic for a split.
I have some creative ideas and friends in the blogging / internet marketing niche with gigantic lists.
Bob — October 2nd, 2011, 11:36 am
James,
I emailed you earlier. Let’s connect and discuss.
Bob
Marcin — October 2nd, 2011, 1:39 pm
Bob,
I think you have a winner here.
Good luck!
John Breese — October 2nd, 2011, 8:16 am
Just had my a-ha moment 2minutes/30 seconds ago…a very unique line of clothing & accessories (yeah, yeah…how many times have you heard THAT one, huh?)
Won’t make this contest deadline, but I will keep you all posted.
James — October 2nd, 2011, 1:40 pm
Rock it dude! Everyone loves unique styles of clothing.
Andy Rodie — October 2nd, 2011, 5:27 pm
Excellent post Noah. Very informative.
ElamBend — October 3rd, 2011, 12:28 pm
This is why I love the internet, you really can learn to do a lot, for free!, just by looking around. Noah’s article is a great resource for testing your market and commenter Patrick’s quick explanation of CPC and CPM ads added to the value of the post.
I’d like to add a bit myself:
Steve Blank teaches a lean start-up class at Stanford and puts a lot of his stuff online.
This post:
http://steveblank.com/2011/09/22/how-to-build-a-web-startup-lean-launchpad-edition/
Cover a lot of ground for getting started and makes a great compliment to Noah’s post.
May a 1000 flowers bloom
cheers
Ace_ — October 3rd, 2011, 9:35 pm
This is awesome! If I had an information based product, which would be the best route? Shopify seems to be for physical products… thanks for any help!
James Newell — October 4th, 2011, 5:51 am
I started my latest muse idea just after this post came out – it doesn’t get more niche than an app which translates words into UK numberplate combinations (number plate translator dot com) but we’ll see where it goes
This is a great post- love the specifics on how to define the market etc- resources such as FB and adsense/adwords are great to get an idea of the numbers.
Yes it may take more than a weekend to build your business / product but the point is you can make a *ton* of progress in a weekend if you stop everything and focus on what you want- as Gary V says “stop watching f*** lost!”
I struggled with ideas for a long time but keep thinking and keep plugging away and you’ll find your muse- a winner never quits after all.
Tranquilo
Zara — October 4th, 2011, 1:22 pm
This a great post. I am too late for the comp but I now finally have my muse, still in my head though at this stage. I have totally enjoyed reading everyone’s comments, there is definitely a supportive spirit present but guess in a way that is to be expected as Noah said more than most entrepreneurs, going into a lot of detail, making quiet a complex topic manageable/ understandable for non-techies (like me). Plus another thing I am beginning to understand from reading Tim’s blog and 4HWW is (especially for Muse no. 1) It is not so important what the idea is, it is how we execute the idea, then once we have the dough we can do something honorable e.g. save the world or/ and work on the business of our dreams. I have spent too long ‘thinking’ about the my muse and finally decided to just do it! Anyway best of luck to all the wantrepreneurs out there, may you all be entrepreneurs very soon.
Bill Lyons — October 4th, 2011, 2:17 pm
I did the latter and built “a world-changing product that requires months of fine-tuning.” I wish I wasn’t so much of an extremist. At the end of the day I’m a perfectionist that strives for simplicity. (An oxymoron that has to be managed by prioritization and delegation.)
I loved the article and now I know exactly what I am doing this weekend
After all Zuckerberg had many “weekend businesses” when FB was a start-up…
David — October 4th, 2011, 2:57 pm
Hi, All
Honestly, I am disappointed. A great number of people will fail from using the information of this post. It is dangerously incomplete. By the way, “Wantrepreneur” was a nice touch, but it is only a motivational trick (a harmful one). This plan requires you to be Noah Kagan to work. I can say with 99% certainty and most readers are not.
The marketing plan in this post is wowfully horrible. Basically, it states to find what people are searching for and spend money on, make a website and sell product. My god, it’s so simple. Get ready to lose your rent money. But, hey you’re going to have a $1,000,000 idea at the end, right? Let me add more zeros and see if it sounds better. $1,000,000,000 idea. No, it’s still a fictional number that has been pulled out of thin air and it stinks too.
The cost and income potential in this post is wildly speculative. The marketing plan using paid reddit ads (or any other social media ads) can be incredibly expensive. Yes, one should validate if a venture is going to work (duh), but the cost of doing so can (most probably will) more than quadruple per campaign than the projections in this post.
This whole post plays on the readers emotion not to be a “Wantrepreneur”, which hundreds of dollars put into a horrible business plan can only remedy. No thank you.
Adam Schneller Nolan — October 4th, 2011, 3:00 pm
Hey… so our muse has generated $50,000 now since we launched it a couple weeks ago. Not sure who to talk to about this, but we’ve got tons of proof & this thing isn’t done yet.
Any idea who I can talk to in regards to getting this recognized b/c I”m pretty confident I’m the leader right now
I can be reached at adam@airiusmedia(.)com
Cheers
Adam
Espree — October 6th, 2011, 12:07 am
But Adam you had a list to start with. Most people don’t have a list.
Bob — October 6th, 2011, 3:00 pm
Great result so far Adam.
I thought the landing pages had to be using Unbounce or WordPress – it seems like you’re using Kajabi and selling to your existing mailing list which may have cost thousands and have been build up over many years.
It sounds like you had a lot of things in place before this competition started. Even just creating the hours of edited video content must have taken a while.
From the type of product that you’re selling it’s clear that that you’ve sold info products many times before because your content is based on making many sales & how to replicate it.
Would you say you’re still at $50,000 profit after considering what you had at your disposal to start the project?
It would be awesome if this kind of profit could be generated from a stand-still.
Best of luck!
Bill Lyons — October 4th, 2011, 7:23 pm
What is your solution? Keep paying the rent and never own?
Helen — October 6th, 2011, 2:33 pm
I thought the idea here was to set it all up for as low cost as possible and to NOT throw money at ideas until you’re certain there is a market and you’ve already started making money. There is no throwing away of rent money here!
I have to say I started my idea quickly last Friday and had 100 clicks and close to 20 signups in the first 3 days and I haven’t even spent a single dollar!
Now I’m working on better conversion rate by tweaking the landing page. I’m no where near the level of profit other entrants have mentioned but I’m still really pleased – this is the furthest I’ve got in such a short time ever!
Espree — October 6th, 2011, 3:00 pm
Congrats Helen! Did you utilize social media to get the initial click or did you have access to an email list?
Helen — October 6th, 2011, 3:05 pm
No e-mail list, I just used the £30 free adwords voucher that they send to new accounts & the 30 day trial of Unbounce.
Adrian — April 24th, 2012, 12:00 pm
So what would you suggest?
Adam Schneller Nolan — October 4th, 2011, 3:01 pm
Quote:
“Hey just an idea…
Most people go AD > WEBSITE and get very low conversion rates.
Have you tried AD > SQUEEZE PAGE > EMAIL LIST > AUTO-RESPONDER WITH SALES PAGE?
When you give first, accept their email in return, and then present a sales page your conversion rate will increase dramatically.”
That’s exactly what I do… did you get that idea from a product you bought recently? Lol I just did a BIG product launch that taught exactly that and we’ve sold thousands of copies
Cheers
-Adam
John — October 4th, 2011, 9:38 pm
to answer derrick who asked where to find programmers
here are some good sites:
odesk.com
guru.com
elance.com
freelancer.com
Alexx — October 5th, 2011, 10:25 am
Its hard, its very hard… any idea for a southeastern Europe country? I need help
Ern — October 5th, 2011, 11:26 am
Thanks for all the information. My idea requires a homepage that has two opt-in boxes in the center of the page because each opt-in will take a different kind of client to a different part of the website. Once in the designated part of the site, it will need to be an interactive experience for the user, setting up a profile, account info, etc.
Can this be done on WordPress or do I need a web designer to set it up for me? If so, are elance, odesk, and the other places mentioned a safe place to submit the work to be done (meaning that people won’t steal ideas)?
Thanks again.
blendahtom — October 5th, 2011, 5:17 pm
Profit made on 4 day sale.. $600
I ran 4 day sale over this weekend and used many of the tips that Noah mentioned.
I basically did a Motorsports version of AppSumo. I did a 50/50 split with my promotional partner and Chompon takes 10%
Stats from Chompon.com
Total Views: 981
Total Shares: 23
Total Purchases: 6
Total Revenue: $1,350.00
Espree — October 6th, 2011, 12:08 am
Love it! woot woot
blendahtom — October 6th, 2011, 3:11 am
Thanks Espree
I used weebly.com to setup my site, highly recommended. Cheap and super easy for a novice. There are even templates are even templates pug there. I then used Chompon.com as our daily deals platform which is widget based and just grabbed code and was done.
My trick was partnering with friends who already get traffic. They have the same type of customers I am looking for so it was a match. My friend quickly made a video for me this weekend which got us up and running.
Key points
Friends and contacts= resources (use them)
Video is a great way to extend reach
Stay in a vertical or niche you have passion
Thanks
Tom
Ash — October 6th, 2011, 1:28 pm
Cool site. How did you setup the email collection page? Did you use chimpmail? Weebly? Congratulations on the success!
blendahtom — October 7th, 2011, 7:27 am
I orginally tried to use Mailchimp bit had issues. Its def needs improvemnt imo. I ended up using the stock form plugin for weebly
p.s you can see pics of the VIP”s at the track yesterday at http://twitter.com/racecrowds
Ash — October 7th, 2011, 8:49 am
Does Weebly then capture your emails and then allow you to send emails to your list whenever you wish? What do they charge for this? I didn’t see any mention of this on their site.
blendahtom — October 18th, 2011, 7:12 am
Hi Ash,
Yes Weebly has a form widget that I plugged into the splash page. I then take those emails and import them into Mailchimp. I would have preferred to use Mailchimp exclusively for form ingestion but I couldn’t get it to work the way I wanted it to.
Sorry for the late reply..
Stuart — October 6th, 2011, 4:45 am
Wow. Wow.
Just had this great idea.
Thanks so much for the inspiration.
Ariel — October 6th, 2011, 8:33 am
I don’t have enough time for to compete in the contest but I am going to transfer Noah’s wisdom and document myself as I do the interactive research for my future restaurant/ satisfy the gist for a project in a class. Maybe I could show you when it’s done Tim
Bill Lyons — October 6th, 2011, 9:41 am
@blendahtom congrats!
Nicolas Cole — October 6th, 2011, 7:42 pm
Profit Made: $70
Step 1: Find your (profitable) idea
I have had this idea in my head for a while, but never acted upon it. I dance Argentine Tango, and noticed that there seems to be a lack of specialized clothing for this specific dance.
I’m sure as you know Tim, in Traditional Tango, men are wearing suits and women are wearing evening dresses (at milongas). The clothing line I want to create would be high-quality, stylish comfortable, functional clothes geared towards:
a) The Younger crowd of dancers emerging in Argentine Tango
b) People who are starting to incorporate“nuevo tango” elements in their dance (which is having an impact on their fashion)
c) People who want comfortable, fashionable clothing for practica, classes and milongas
I have been to different festivals, danced in different cities and started to notice this trend of shifting away from suits and evening dresses. Also, the market is not saturated, there are very few Argentine Tango specific clothing lines. On top of this, there is a brand of high-end, high-quality women Tango shoes “Comme Il Faut” that are priced high, and selling very well.
Step 2: Find $1,000,000 worth of customers
I decided to use the Facebook method outlined in the post to find my future customers.
Here we my (very very limited) search parameters:
Facebook users who live in one of the counties: Canada or United States
Age 18 or older
Who are Female
Who like #Argentine Tango
Estimated Reach – 10,300 people
I am planning to sell each article of clothing around $100
10,300 future customers (x) $100 = $100
Average cost of a milonga (attended most likely 1-2 times a week) = $10
Average cost of private lesson = >$80 an hour (in North America with very good teacher)
Average cost of festival = $200-$500
Average cost of a pair of shoes = $100-$350
One of my teachers did a study and found that over 70% of women who danced Argentine Tango, in my city, have a PhD.
I have noticed that most people who are dancing Argentine Tango are older, they have well paying jobs, they wear nice clothing, seem to have above average income. In conclusion, Argentine Tango is an expensive hobby, mostly danced by people who are older and have an average to above-average income.
Step 4: Validate your idea
I created a landing page using Unbounce:
http://unbouncepages.com/voleostangoclothing/
(I was very reluctant to share this because it is going to mess up my stats and add to how many unique visitors I can have, but it is proof of my landing page)
I advertised on Facebook Ads and Google Adwords.
For Facebook Ads I started off with a $10 campaign. In the end my CPC was down to $0.17 (awesome). I was able to get 56 clicks.
For Google Adwords I found a $75 voucher. I created a campaign with $50, was able to get 57 clicks.
In total I received 113 unique visitors to the landing page. I got 21 emails or “conversions” which works out to be 18.6%. I am quite happy with that number, I guessed I was going to have under 10%.
A few considerations, obviously an email doesn’t count as a sale, but I have no products on the landing page, no pictures, no sketches or anything. I feel that this test did validate my idea and I feel that there is a demand for this product.
It is hard to validate my idea further at this stage as I don’t have a physical product (or even a picture) to attempt to sell or receive payment for.
My next step will be to design and create a few prototypes, then do more testing (ie. validating my idea by actually selling these prototypes). After that (I know it will be successful), the plan is to find a manufacturer and sell. Whether I want to sell locally first, or online, or at festivals is still up in the air.
My small profit came from a customer I was telling this idea about. She gave me a down payment for one of the first pairs of pants that I design and make. As far as proof for this $70, here is a screen shot of the Email Money Transfer. I blurred out her name and some other details just for privacy reasons.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fom9Yg1WMym9ZG9C_MTZqauzXwSWGh5S9Evy5bPCyTA/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1
I wanted to thank Noah for writing this post as I gave me the boost I needed. I know I will probably not create the most profit (as I really haven’t created any), but I am on something big here. I am so excited to create this product and start implementing everything I learned in the 4HWW.
Tim and Noah, you guys rock! I hope I get the change to meet you both (whether through this contest, or sometime in the future).
Time to get back to studying for my midterms
Charlie Hoehn — October 6th, 2011, 11:35 pm
Awesome job, Nicolas! Thanks so much for the fantastic detailed write up
Espree — October 7th, 2011, 5:16 pm
This was awesome Nicolas!!!!
I think that you already got that first down payment says a lot. CONGRATS
Duane Adolph — October 7th, 2011, 10:08 pm
Excellent Post. Nicholas. Appreciate the details.
Keep Moving Forward.
Eboy — October 6th, 2011, 11:44 pm
Dude, you should interview Frank Kern. Your subscribers would love that guy.
sean browne — October 7th, 2011, 4:02 am
Great post. Will enable me to better structure my approach to releasing online products and services. Thank you!
Rachel Rofe — October 7th, 2011, 6:32 am
$6569.81 and counting (I’m going on a road trip, not sure what internet access will be like, and wanted to get in a number.)
I don’t know if this will count… and if it doesn’t, I’m totally cool with it. I tried another business too but it didn’t work out as well.
(It will… I just couldn’t create enough time to drive leads to it in the last few days.)
The reason this might not count is I have an existing internet marketing business, so this was another product I added to my funnel. It was a new landing page, new domain, etc… but I did already have a list and a plan to market this product.
Just being honest – you can use your judgment if you think it’s fair or not.
Proof of revenue:
http://screencast.com/t/TpFfGBhBPG0
http://screencast.com/t/jWCEAaxvxV
Basically, I launched a new product and gave 100% commissions on the front end ($5 up to $9.95) and the back end ($17) to affiliates.
I wanted to bring in leads for a lower dollar product so we could get them in our funnel and upsell them to a higher dollar product later on.
We launched October 4th and have had 2378 front end sales so far, and 745 upsells (going up every time I hit refresh):
http://screencast.com/t/1KXqi4xexQf
…Total sales have been over $33k but I took out the affiliate commissions.
Thanks for this post… it was fun to do and I LOVE the term “wantrepreneur!”
Mel Richards — October 8th, 2011, 1:09 pm
@Rachel Rofe
What are these screenshots from? What app are you using to manage your income? Is this an affiliate tool admin site? Looks awesome.
Thanks!
Rhys — October 7th, 2011, 4:04 pm
$200 worse off. Don’t care.
Actually managed to launch something. As a serial ideas tester I’ve been making a lot of people a lot of money though affiliates. Thought I’d give it a shot.
Made a produc in a week that I thought I could sell. Sponsored a couple of things that drove a bit of traffic. No bites.
I can quite happily prove I’m $200 in the red. I’m not bitter. It’s been fun and I’ve got stuff out there.
Thank you.
Mike Robertson — October 7th, 2011, 6:27 pm
Tim, although I’m unsure if we can share numbers for the contest, are
you interested in any case studies?
Let me know if there’s some place I can send a writeup walking through the process. We had a great launch this week and may be able to provide some real world examples.
Thanks!
Mike Robertson
Espree — October 8th, 2011, 12:27 am
NET PROFIT: $17.40
REVENUE: $37.00
PRODUCT: Outsourcing Cheat Sheet
http://www.outsourcingcheatsheet.net/
PROOF: VIDEO Documented the whole process…
you can see the video here on YouTube… http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B72378C2BA594D3
LANDING PAGE: Site Visitors 128 | Conversions 13 | Conv Rate 10.16%
_________________
EXPENSES
_________________
ADVERTISING [all cold - did no outreach to people I know or via social]
Google Adwords: 15 clicks | 5,924 impressions | CTR .25% | avg CPC $1.60
TOTAL SPEND $24.07
[have a $100 credit for adwords]
Facebook Ads: 38 clicks 25,511 | campaign reach | CTR .022%
TOTAL SPEND $56.12
[have a $50 credit for facebook ads]
LinkedIn Ads: 1 Click | 16,180 impressions | CTR .006% | avg CPC $3.94
TOTAL SPEND $3.94
TOTAL AD SPEND: – $84.13
AFTER APPLYING CREDIT: – $10.06
PayPal Transaction fees: -$1.37
Domain Name: – $8.17
___________________________
TOOLS I USED FOR CHALLENGE
___________________________
PRODUCT CREATION
Writing
Microsoft Word
Screen cast video
jing – http://www.techsmith.com/jing/
Mind Mapping
mindmeister – http://www.mindmeister.com/
eBook made pretty
ebookcake – http://ebookcake.com/about/
SITE DEVELOPMENT AND ADVERTISING
Domain Name
godaddy – http://www.godaddy.com/
Landing Page
unbounce – http://unbounce.com/
Video Camera
mackbook isight
AppSumo Adwords Class
http://www.appsumo.com/introduction-to-adwords/
AppSumo Copy Writing Course
http://www.appsumo.com/kopywriting-kourse/
Mind Mapping
mindmeister – http://www.mindmeister.com/
Live Chat
snap engage – http://www.snapengage.com/
Market Research
Google Insights, Google Trends, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Answers, Google External Keyword Tool
Phone
google voice – http://www.google.com/voice
Merchant
paypal http://www.paypal.com/
Potential Buyer Abandonment Page
say hello there – http://www.sayhellothere.com/
Advertising
Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads
Website Analytics
google analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
Google Website Crawler
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
….I think that covers it…
_________________________
NEXT STEPS
_________________________
Improve the landing page video, blogger outreach, buy a banner ad in a related forum, tweak current advertising campaigns and set up Get Clicky http://getclicky.com/ to know what sites my buyers are coming from… Wish me luck!
Sean Crumpler — October 8th, 2011, 12:56 am
Direct profit = $0
Indirect profit $99 contract per month.
In my regular business I provide IT services for small business with 5-20 employees specialzing in doctors. There is a wholesale market in help desksupport. So I thought it be interesting to create a muse that would sell 1 seat tech support to soho businesses. I wanted it to be as automatic as possible so I setup a shopify site and then found a wholesale helpdesk group and twisted the owners arm till he agreed to let me sell a single support contract at a time (rather than a minimum of 5 employees).
Then I discovered shopify cannot support a monthly subscription model.
So had to change my pricing.
Shopify gave me $100 free google adwords.
And I started everything up.
Within a couple days I received an email from a Chiropractor, a market I had never done before.
I met with him an sold him on a monthly support contract.
The PPC ad cost like $3.93
It was not a fully automated muse.
But the calls and emails that came in from the test have resulted in business.
Not a direct muse profit.
But it had brought me new clients which still rocks!
JPS — October 8th, 2011, 3:44 am
36 Hour Profit: -£3
Business: stevejobsrip.myshopify.com
A site is dedicated to sell Steve Jobs memorabilia
Started: 36 Hours Ago.
Time Taken To the Design the products: 7 minutes
Time Taken To set Up Shopify: 20 minutes
Time Taken To Set Up FaceBook Ads: 5 minutes
Time Taken To Configure My PayPal Account: 23 minutes
Total Time Taken: 55 minutes
Electra — October 8th, 2011, 5:39 am
Noah,
Gratitude Dude http://bit.ly/ngQT2x on sale at http://www.ElectrasMonograms.com
Appreciate the thorough blog post~ I’m happy to report I did not find a million dollar muse, but you lit a fire under me and I did push my edges and put something out there that hopefully will generate lots of smiles~ if not bucks
If something should happen and Gary V. buys several thousand after the buzzer, I’ll be in touch just to let you know! ha ha
Be well, Electra
Marcin — October 8th, 2011, 5:39 am
100$ worse off.
No worries.
2 muses tested, no sales.
Shit happens.
But I learned a lot regarding facebook ads and now I’m applying it to my offline business.
Thanks for this post, it was fun and I’m hoping for more 4HWW related posts in the future.
Joshua — October 8th, 2011, 6:00 am
I made £ 15!!! (thats just over 20 dollars)
…I also spent about £50 on advertising.
I’m not even going to bother posting proof of revenue! I don’t think I’m going to be winning any prizes with a loss of £ 35.
The challenge was awesome though!!!
I put together a 25 page e-booklet for people who have BACK PAIN. People also got access to an online exercise library with clear video demonstration of each exercise and stretch.
Thank you Tim and Noah for much needed nudge (and what a great post!).
I am happy with what I put together. So much so, that I gave the booklet to both my parents. They are half way through the program and it’s doing them wonders!
I think the booklet is useful and anyone who has back pain. If you have aches please take a look at it.
I understand that this is no million dollar idea so I have decided to make it free for everyone!
You download a copy here and get access to the exercise library for a month.
http://bit.ly/qO39oV
If you have ideas for improvement or just want to get in touch just drop me a line on my clinic’s facebook page
http://on.fb.me/qdXqIp
All the best,
Josh
Josh Schwerdtfeger — October 8th, 2011, 6:19 am
This post gave me the final motivation to push my idea through. Noah, thank you for taking the time to share your experiences. The term Wantreprenuer hit me like a 2 ton heavy thing.
This is an idea I have been “wanting” to do for about 3 years now. I was taking my sweet time, but now I’ve got to stop with the excuses. My concept was a solar charger that was portable and simply had a usb port so I could charge any of my devices that would recharge via the usb port on a PC or laptop. I noticed everything on the market had a battery with it that the solar cells would charge first. I didn’t think this was very efficient and a waste of time.
I also like the idea of recycling the materials that we can so I use recycled vinyl billboard for the material to stitch the solar charger into. My web site is http://www.recycledsolarcharger.com
So, I went live with my worpress web site (I build myself, and had to do it twice) on Tuesday, October 4.
I had everything final with shopping cart and Google checkout (I plan to get better pictures, but not letting that stop me) by Friday, October 7th.
Launched my first adwords campaign at 1:00pm using a New User credit of $80 for using bluehost as my hosting site. As of 12:20 I’m no longer a wantreprenuer as I had my first customer. My profit….$32.00! And I am so giddy about it, my girlfriend told me this morning I’m walking around with my “just had sex” face!
Here’s my proof: (not of my sex face)
http://db.tt/jPawGDF7
http://db.tt/kulMzvbQ
Thanks for giving me the inspiration I needed to stop making excuses!
Josh
Michael J — October 8th, 2011, 11:09 am
Now that people are reporting back with the Wins, Loses, and Experiences, what have we learned and how can we do better next time?
It seems that most people either lost money (and gained some experience) or they made very little money (and gained some experience).
Why didn’t the majority of people who tried, found their million dollar audience, and stayed in the game NOT do better?
I’m down $75 on the 14 Day Challenge (I still have 2 weeks to go since I set a 30 Day Goal at the same time).
If I’m learning anything, it’s that you can”t sell A THING unless you have traffic (meaning “potential customers who want what you have to offer”). So, you can borrow someone else’s traffic, buy traffic, advertise for traffic, find a group of people starving for whatever it is you have to offer (or find a group that’s starving and offer to feed them), or you ca sell to others and have them spread the word and create some traffic.
So far, I have NOT found my traffic source. All I need now is a High Tech Divining Rod.
Anyone else have thoughts about how we can do better?
Karl — October 9th, 2011, 12:12 pm
instant paid traffic – you need to do kw research use the google kw tool… if you dont have a adwords acct set one up. go through the google tutorials… they will even help you these days set up a campaign (newer friendlier Google). Adwords is how I started making money immeditatly with my niche product. go get perry marshalls book “ultimate guide to google adwords” read it then read it again then read again. It all depends what niche you are in as far as cost per click, however the better you dial your campaigns – the cheaper the clicks get – google rewards ads that get lots of clicks and you will start paying less. You can lose your shorts if you go into adwords blind…as most do. That book will help you get started safely, get cheaper clicks and strategy to get more clicks cheaper. I was no slouch at Adwords when I found that book however I trimmed my monthly adwords spend (search network not content) from $1600 to $500 (for the same amt of clicks – of course the flip side – I could have had 2X the clicks for $1600 – however the amt of clicks I was getting for $500 fit well for cash flow, conversion rate, at the time when the biz was brand new) by following the lessons in the book. I was paying 65% – 80% less per click than my competitors. Google rewards landing page content kw’s matching the kw’s in your campaign…this is how you beat your competitors. The more laser targeted your kw campaign is to landing page kw’s…the cheaper it gets. and of course you sell more stuff…which is why we are here right?!
dont forget Bing can help out too…they are slightly cheaper on clicks…but only go there after you get Google dialed in. you can import you google campaigns directly into Bing…how nice of them huh?
now go get you some of that traffic OK.
Russell Ruffino — October 8th, 2011, 11:53 am
Profit: $17,867.64
Final total for my project with Adam Schneller Nolan.
I’m pretty sure Adam submitted the income proof for
us – if not, contact us and we’re happy to provide! This
has been an amazing inspiration to get off our butts,
leverage every relationship and contact we could, and
make some serious cash in a very short period of time.
If anyone wants to know, of course we’re happy to show
exactly how we did it!
Russ
Mac — October 19th, 2011, 7:38 am
Well of course, please share the details like others are already doing =)
Adam Schneller Nolan — October 8th, 2011, 5:32 pm
Profit Made: $17,867.64
Website: Note: Removed website as per Comment Rules.
Income Proof: (more provided upon request): http://randompromostuff.s3.amazonaws.com/usfproof.png
Notes: For some reason I posted this yesterday and it hasn’t shown up. Maybe it’s waiting to be approved, but it was DEFINITELY submitted WAY before the deadline (and I’ve been posting updates). As you can see the screenshot is from yesterday.
Description: Info Product targeted towards the four hour work week community and the internet marketing community. Product is a video and PDF series that explains how to make more money from current customers using sales funnels. Product was launched on the 20th of Sept (and can be verified by domain name registration date), however profit recorded for this experiment has been stated above. Actual profit to date is closer to $30,000.
Website is hosted on HostGator, using a wordpress setup and the Optimize Press theme. All payments were accepted through PayPal.
Total time to produce the muse: Approx. 10 hours.
Cheers & may the best company win!
-Adam & Russ
Josh — October 8th, 2011, 5:54 pm
Noah,
Profit: $32!
Thanks for taking the time to post your experience and advice. Your comment about being a wantreprenuer really hit me. I’ve gotten to work on a side project that I’ve wanted to do for some time.
I’ve developed a solar charger for usb powered devices that does not have an on board battery. It will charge an iphone with direct current form solar panels. All the units I was looking at all have batteries and I felt this just added more time.
Well I worked through my prototypes and went live with my web site at the beginning of this week. The solar cells are stitched into recycled vinyl billboards. My original plan was to also use the solar cells from old garden lights as well as some of the cable wiring from old computers, but the voltage just wouldn’t work out in either case.
So, I was finally up and ready to sell Friday and used an $80 credit with google adwords for my first to days of my adword campaign. Checking my email this morning I had my first confirmed sales at 12:20am last night. And this was not a sale to any family of friend.
Just want to say thanks to you and Tim for all you’ve done to inspire and teach me that I can be an entreprenuer.
Here are links to my google analytics page and google checkout page. I am still very excited about my first sale! My profit….$32!
http://db.tt/jPawGDF7
http://db.tt/kulMzvbQ
Next phase is to automate the shipping!
Thanks again!
Josh
Ryan O'Meara — October 9th, 2011, 9:37 am
Love this type of approach. The data that is now freely available from the likes of Insights, Trends etc used to cost businesses thousands to acquire. No excuses!
Karl — October 9th, 2011, 11:44 am
killer blog post. thanks for the nuggets I will put them to work. This strategy is essentially how I built and launched my niche biz in 6 months way back in the olden days of late 2008… that now does $10K month (and growing) I did not reinvent the wheel…I simply made it better with more value, better marketing + its the most expensive solution in the niche (part of my market positioning strategy) My marketing is completely unique in this seasoned niche. I paid to be taught the fundamentals of building any biz on the internet (IMC when Derek Gehl was running it )…. old skool kw research….now days if I get an idea…10 min in the Google kw tool and I can get an idea of the monthly search volume for a given idea keyword cluster in a niche. If I want to test put up a ad words campaign (with the kw intellegence) send to a web page and collect emails to gauge interest.
With my main biz I knew there was massive world wide demand so I put the sales letter up and began selling my product immeadiatly using Ad words. now my biz is 2.5 yrs old and have Google top page organic rank for some of the most competitive kws in my niche and spend my advertising money these days on SEO not adwords.
noah kagan — October 9th, 2011, 1:45 pm
This is truly the highlight of my month for anyone who participated in the contest. You can now remove your label of Wantrepreneur forever!
I have about 3 college thesis’ worth of failed business attempts, but the real value you now have is the momentum and learnings from taking these chances in improving your future.
Really proud of everyone and looking forward to eating some tacos!
Zachary Park — November 21st, 2011, 4:57 pm
Noah,
Here’s my attempt at the mint.com lead generator. Your feedback is much appreciated.
http://soresume.com
Thanks,
Zac
Simon Wong — October 9th, 2011, 9:21 pm
I created a website that allows people to ask a question and receive an honest opinion for a $1. I didn’t make enough to cover my losses, but it was fun nonetheless.
The website is called Truthishly, but now I’m not sure if I should continue it.
Allen — October 10th, 2011, 5:54 am
Tim,
Mike Robertson and I ran a pretty good launch last week. Although we’re not in the running for the contest I’ve done a writeup on our process. If you’re interested in seeing it for use as a case study, let one of us know where to send it.
Thanks!
Allen
David Vasta — October 10th, 2011, 7:26 pm
I accept your challenge and by the end of this weekend will have something I can work with. I have an idea I need to put to the test. Thanks for the great post.
Adam Schneller Nolan — October 11th, 2011, 12:01 pm
Just wondering when the winners will be announced
Cheers
-Adam
Mac — October 12th, 2011, 8:07 pm
I’m just laughing my ass off to the credibility indicators used on his CV e.g. “employee #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint.” Too funny.
Wes — October 13th, 2011, 5:10 pm
Interesting I think I am going to use this method for my next venture. I would interested to hear from others whom have real world application of this method. Keep it up Tim! You the man!
James — October 15th, 2011, 10:06 am
Thanks, very inspirational. Busy formulating a plan as I am leaving this comment
Domi — October 17th, 2011, 2:07 am
I was just wondering that you dont analyze the competition. Why not?
blendahtom — October 18th, 2011, 7:16 am
I just wanted to say thanks to Tim and Noah.. I was informed late last week that I was the winner. I was shocked!! .. I’m super stoked for Taco time with Noah and $1000 of Appsumo credit. If that isn’t a recipe for success I don’t know what is!
p.s — I also purchased the 4hourworkweek on Audible after listening to a podcast with Noah making a reference to it calling it the “Lean Startup” before the Lean Startup was cool.. that intrigued me and after listening to the book… I def see the similarities.
Thanks so much!!
Tom
charlie — October 19th, 2011, 11:30 am
hey this is cool you won. what business did you submit? I saw you started racecrowds in July I think? did you do a shopify business with this or something else that was a new component?
blendahtom — October 19th, 2011, 2:50 pm
Hi Charlie,
I registered the domain racecrowds I think in Aug.. and I originally wanted to create a platform similar to Songkick.com for automotive fans..
I started talking to potential users and started to see a need for special events experiences. I launched a launchrock page in late Sep and then had my first deal the first week of Oct. after I read the blog post. I seriously didn’t think I had a chance to be honest.. I made $600.. but it was a great first start and the post was the motivation I needed to actually launch a deal..
Hope this helps..
charlie — October 20th, 2011, 11:21 am
very cool! i know sometimes I never develop a domain for 2-3 years. I really like the idea for racecrowds. it’s a pretty awesome idea. groupon had a drive a nascar special about a year ago and that and a half price movie ticket are the only things i’ve been interested in. thanks for the launchrock link.
Tom S — October 20th, 2011, 8:54 am
Done! We acted on this post and built a Shopify store around a new product we produced a few months ago: http://www.morelmushroomcandles.com
We did this in less than 48 hours.
Using the Facebook Ads formula in this post, we confirmed there is a market and in less than 24 hours after launch we’ve had 8 orders. We’re full speed ahead from here.
Thanks for the inspirational post!
Zara — October 20th, 2011, 1:55 pm
Hi Tom, I just checked out your morel mushroom candle and looks really cool, good luck with the sales. I grew up in Australia and now live in Hong Kong and never heard of morel mushrooms so can only image the smell. I am presently researching candles as a muse idea too (v diff from your concept) and wanted to know if you are willing to discuss candles offline? My email address is sammystar888@hotmail.com please drop me a line if you have time, thanks
Kman — October 20th, 2011, 9:12 am
Although an interesting article, it really underestimates the important of doing a competitive analysis. I mean, if you set up a (paid) service that is highly popular but that others are already offering for free (maybe by using banner ads to support it) how will your business survive?
It’s not as easy as just doing KW research — you need to see what’s already out there…
Jamie — October 20th, 2011, 7:32 pm
Has anyone else tried http://reachablehq.com to generate landing pages?
They had some unique features so I decided to go with them (as an alternative to Unbounce).
Easy to setup and so far I’ve been happy with the results.
Simon — October 21st, 2011, 2:16 am
Tim,
Saw you live in Melbourne and didn’t get to ask my question!
Thanks to your book – 3 years ago my parter and I tested and created our first muse modeling a lot of your strategies and have been quite successful selling downloadable information products. Thank-you!!
I know you use a lot of online software tools to simplify your life and your business – this the direction we’re going bootstrapping and building these types of services.
My question:
Do you have any strategies or advice specific to marketing & selling SaaS (software as a service) products and how do you go about getting the initial mass of raving fans to these?!
Joe Hartley — October 24th, 2011, 3:36 pm
How does one find the Facebook stats described in the the article? It’s the example right below Google Trends, etc.
Tom S — October 25th, 2011, 1:58 pm
Hi Joe — http://www.facebook.com/ads
John — October 25th, 2011, 10:51 pm
Does anyone know what happened to this contest…..do you know the results?
julian bradbrook — October 27th, 2011, 1:26 pm
This post and the video really inspired me and along with reading 4HW gave me the knowledge to pull together enough info about the subject I decided to start a business based on. Golf was the subject I decided to concentrate on as I thought there were lots of people interested in golf who would be willing to spend some of their cash on products.
Not sure how it will all go but my fingers are crossed and I would like to thank you for the inspiration you gave me to step up and do something.
Thanks.
Randy Gonce — October 28th, 2011, 11:23 am
I have a great idea that i know could make a lot, but where do I start? This article was great for encouragment but I live pay check to pay check and have limited spare because I am serving in the military. How to I invest the money in my idea to make it work? Help will be greatly appreciated.
Mike Graf — November 4th, 2011, 7:19 am
Hey Randy, this is prototypical wantrapreneur thinking. I dont say this to bring you down, but to try and shake you. Snap out of it!
If you watch a few episodes of Sharks tank or Dragons den you’ll see that ideas arent worth much (unless patented or patentable). Businesses are what gets them salivating.
If you’re really short on money, then you could do a few things:
– Cut spending (be drastic! Eat only rice, buy Nothing etc)
– Earn more (Sleep less and spend the time making money on Odesk.com or get a Part time job)
If you’re really short on time, then you do a few things:
– Eliminate (see tims book 4 hour work week for tips)
– Spend money to save time, Charge out work w/ money to get additional time, such as pay a local kid to mow your lawn etc..
– Quit your job and start your business if you’re very confident it is a “Great idea” .
Randy — November 7th, 2011, 9:37 am
-Mike!
Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are getting at. What I was trying to really say is. I do not have the skill neccisary to build the actual idea. I would need someone with programming skills and be the computer savy type. The idea is great but how to I build it? Where do I start by recruiting others to help actually ‘make’ the idea come true. I was thinking of trying to find programmers at the local college.
Bill Lyons — November 8th, 2011, 9:26 am
Hi Randy, instead of the local college I would find someone on
odesk.com
guru.com
elance.com
freelancer.com
like John suggested above. Just be sure to look at their reviews or get references of their previous work. MOST important of all make sure you are administrating and tracking the code through a Code Management Software (CMS) like beanstalkapp.com or something similar (there are a ton of CMS’ out there – Wikipedia actually has a good comparison chart). Last thing you want to do is have a programmer go sideways and hold your code hostage. With a CMS your programmer will have to check the code in and out and if something goes wrong you can always go back to a previous revision of the code and hire someone new. Most likely you will want your app/site coded in Ruby, PHP, or MVC3. The mistake most make is to get their site/app programmed first then get it designed – and that is really backwards. Spend $200-$2,000 designing the site first then get it programmed. You want your site programmed to your design not the other way around. It will save you programming time of having to reprogram to the design. Hope that helps
Bill Lyons — October 28th, 2011, 3:11 pm
Read the post, signed up for AppSumo and got their free Facebook Ads How-To Video, Applied the techniques, in less than a week we added over 1,400 fans to our page http://www.facebook.com/revestor and got over 1,000 users to reserve their username and request an invite to our launch. Not bad shooting for 10,000 now! Thank Tim, Noah and Appsumo
Ek Phuanpongrat — October 29th, 2011, 8:35 am
Thanks for Noah and Tim. I learned a lot from your blog and your book.
Eddie Mark — October 30th, 2011, 4:32 pm
Challenge accepted. I launched my business via shopify.com a few hours ago.
Let’s see where this takes me!
Zachary Park — October 30th, 2011, 7:11 pm
Muse #1
http://www.HowBasic.com
Launched a few days ago. Took about a week to create and launch everything.
For the affiliates. Find it on ClickBank under SEO tutorials.
The next Muse will be much quicker to launch now that the coding is done.
Cheers,
Zac
Mike D — October 31st, 2011, 6:19 am
All the inventions are good as I am working on something right now. However, no one has mentioned anything about patents and idea protection. Any thoughts on this?
Michelle — October 31st, 2011, 1:27 pm
This was awesome. Its Monday so I’m starting now and not waiting on the week end. Thank you for the step by step info. I can come up with ideas all day long. Some of us are much older and kinda stuck in an older way of thinking. So you step by step guide is needed and appreciated.
Michelle
Aaron — November 3rd, 2011, 3:37 pm
great post for an aspiring entrepreneur! priceless information.
Dave G — November 5th, 2011, 1:44 pm
Can anyone help me out with the figures here?
Facebook came up with 84,000 facebook users to target. Noah then calculates the TAM (84000x$50) to over $4m, and is satisfied with the figure.
Later he suggests that a fb ad to 100,000 people might get 80 clicks to your website. So from our 84000 chihuahua lovers we might get 70 clicks. These 70 clicks might convert to only one buyer on the site…
So I might make $50 from my one buyer, but where is my $1m business? I understand there are other channels to grow into (adwords etc) but the point of this analysis is to determine whether this is a good opportunity or whether I move on. And I’m not sure if I’ve got a $50 or $1m idea here…
What am I missing???
Musashi — November 5th, 2011, 9:16 pm
How about creating a ‘go to the top’ button below? I want to check the post again after eye strainingly reading all the precious comments on my palm top.
Thanks Tim.
robert myles — November 8th, 2011, 2:10 pm
Well, i’ve read every post and almost everone did nothing, a little, something and two did alot. Like 15,000 alot. I still can’t see how they did it.
Mel Richards — November 7th, 2011, 2:21 pm
Ya, I know. I don’t really get the math in his post either. Baffles me.
Zachary Park — November 8th, 2011, 3:06 pm
Tim,
Let’s chat. I must be doing something wrong. Any advice on increasing gravity on ClickBank? I’m offering the 75% but received little response from affiliates.
You can find it on CB by searching “SEO Book and Video Tutorials”
Appreciate your time and advice.
Zac
adude — November 8th, 2011, 5:01 pm
its kinda just statistics. You get 300 ppl trying something and if businesses are .333% likely to succeed, there should be atleast 1 who can say “Tim/Noah are the bomb”.
That being said, statistics aside, I do believe they are offering more than just randomness…
Rosalyn — November 8th, 2011, 9:00 pm
Hi Randy (Nov 7th post)
I hear what your saying. I am a single parent, worked a full time job (until recently) while developing and growing my business Fast Fix Buttons. Your full time employment is a false sense of security, why not create your own destiny. While you are working your f/t gig you should be motivated more for your own future. At the beginning (of your project) you may have to work wierd (additional) hours. Put in a lot of sweat equity and determination. And depending on your idea, you may need to develop thicker skin (lots of nay sayers out there!)
I took my product from an idea, made my proto type (my product is simple) have learned a lot about patent law (via my patent lawyers & trial and error $$$$) I designed my marketing/insert card, found simplistic packaging. The website was the easy part (even easier in todays market) I know how to import from overseas (finding a factory, moving freight and trucking to final destination) My product has been published in National Magazine’s (no cost to me!) we recently did a TV Media Campaign that flopped ( & cost me too much money!) I trusted the wrong people. We are currently restructuring various elements of the business (that’s the fun part!) It all has not been easy but the thought that it is “mine” motivates me, as well as I believe I am providing a good role model for my child.
The road less travel is not paved and the terrain can be challenging, but the journey can be exciting along the way, make sure you put on your rose colored glasses, it takes out some of the glare of reality.
Check out my product at Fast Fix Buttons, I always enjoy the feed back (and the additional sales!). If you need assistance with various elements of business development and / or product development I would be more than happy to assist you or point you in the right direction. 4HWW has been a terrific motivator for me (Thank you Tim!) I actually bought 4HWW after I read “Start Something That Matters” by Blake M. both have been excellent reads and priceless resources.
Be Well my Friend(s) ~ Good Luck
Dimitri — November 10th, 2011, 11:57 am
Thanks for the inspiration and ideas.
Matt Wright — November 13th, 2011, 9:21 am
Interesting article and some useful points to take away. I still believe the sort of person who can make a million dollar company over a weekend has to have a certain type of personality, which only limited people have. Still have 100% respect for anyone who gives it a go though.
Jesse Harding — November 14th, 2011, 11:50 am
Another good resource for Step 1: “Find your profitable idea” is to search Kickstarter’s “Most Funded.” There you can see what kinds of ideas people are most willing to get behind, as well as general patterns in the kinds of things they want to support.
Pablo — November 15th, 2011, 4:02 pm
Wow, amazing post
I gotta say I’m guilty of having several ideas, but not taking the time (at least a weekend) to really doing some research, crunching the numbers and getting started… Thanks!
Enrico Guariento — November 16th, 2011, 4:30 pm
This Post is hugely helpful to me, thanks Noah for sharing. I’m in the process of figuring out what I’m gonna do next year after college, and this article really points me in the right direction!
Wouter Sonepouse — November 20th, 2011, 4:34 pm
After a few months still haven’t found an idea to start working on. So I’m kind of looking to partner up. If anyone has an idea or wants to brainstorm and is looking to partner up, email me at wouter_s@hotmail.nl
JN — November 20th, 2011, 5:25 pm
Very interesting and inspirational stuff!
Thanks, guys.
Same Dog — November 21st, 2011, 2:50 pm
While i like the challenge very much, i’m wondering what kind of product we are talking about here? With a 14 day time-limit, i would figure the idea is to create an information product. Could you clarify that part Tim?
Zachary Park — November 21st, 2011, 4:54 pm
Tim,
Here is my attempt at the mint.com lead generator.
http://soresume.com
Feedback is always appreciated.
Zachary Park
Adam Dunn — June 23rd, 2012, 7:50 pm
Hey Zachary,
This looks like a text book landing page… How is it working for you?
-Adam
Mel Richards — November 21st, 2011, 5:09 pm
Nice work Zach! Like the concept. Give the hard times, it can be a great niche.
One suggestion… add some colour. Seems a bit stark. Maybe a nice blue gradient in the background?
Good luck. Keep us posted on its progress.
I’ve also been working on a job related website… will post when it’s ready!
WordPress Guru — November 28th, 2011, 7:54 am
Inspiring post. will start working on it.
cyber monday notebook deals — November 28th, 2011, 9:17 am
One of the problems I realized were that I was literally skipping the first couple chapters
Piet — December 6th, 2011, 12:47 pm
I guess one of the biggest set backs that most people have is taking the first steps , most of us have many multi million dollar ideas but we are afraid to take them because we don’t believe in ourselves or are afraid of failure..
Al — December 7th, 2011, 4:49 am
Hi, great post.
I have started numerous sites and businesses. I have gone at it and I still have not made any great money. Something seems to be blocking it, I’m in that ‘This ain’t never gonna work’ phase as I have been at it for a few years now. Any ideas?
Ben — December 7th, 2011, 9:46 am
So I have a question. If I want to partner with another website, how do I approach this up front without potentially giving away my idea for them to steal?
What are the key point I need to remember when considering product protection?
Mike F — December 18th, 2011, 2:57 pm
On a similar topic (I know it was also mentioned above), how can we avoid or protect ourselves from our idea being stolen by a programmer. Let’s say I have an idea and hire a programmer to make a website for me. Hypothetically, the programmer may create my website but then turn around and make a better website that does the same thing themselves. Maybe I’m paranoid but this is a question I have always always had.
Mike
J.D. — December 8th, 2011, 2:44 pm
Great info… always wanted to know how to research keywords and product location search zones etc. Great resources. Inspiring.
Im more in the make a months wage catagory, and could def use to raise the goal line. Reworked my ads while I was going through this, apparently I’m selling to a very small crowd DOH!
Thanks Noah!
Chris — December 20th, 2011, 5:23 am
After being a fan of fourhourworkweek.com and Tim Ferriss, i decided to try my luck as well.
Ive never been much of a tech guy, anyways based on the book i started a website.
http://www.netbooks-im-vergleich.com/
Main business idea was the Amazon partnershop programm, plus google ads.
The website went on in June, so far i have 190 visitors a month in average, but its not really making money or conversions.
Turnover so far : 20 bucks.
Anyways just wanted to share this, and for my first experience in this world im quite proud and looking forward to the next project.
Cheers Chris
Christian — December 21st, 2011, 5:20 pm
Hey everyone. I’m just wondering if anybody could shoot me some advice as to where to look regarding supplement manufacturers and drink manufacturers.
This probably turns alot of people off and these markets are flooded. I’m well aware. But I’ve got an idea and a gut feeling, and these are the things I’m very knowledgeable on.
So again, if anybody out there has some insight as to where I can find a place that will custom make me my product, I’d be much appreciated.
Great article by the way.
Steve — December 27th, 2011, 3:55 pm
Christian,
You can try Nutricaps labs.
luyimaw — December 25th, 2011, 10:46 am
I can’t stop thinking about this thread. Many thanks to all contributors.
dimitri — January 1st, 2012, 5:14 am
i have a quest to Noah : How many subscribers do I need to get from my landing page and within how much time to say : “Ok, its a good idea, let’s carry on”! THANKS FOR POSSIBLE REPLY
Multimedia Online Store — January 19th, 2012, 7:38 pm
hi!,I love your writing very so much! percentage we communicate more approximately your article on AOL? I need a specialist in this area to unravel my problem. May be that is you! Taking a look ahead to look you.
Marcus Kim — January 24th, 2012, 6:39 pm
I hope to Buddha I’m not shit-balls retarded. . .
It’s official, I think I must have a brain tumor or something because I can’t fill in any of the gaps. I just got the Appsumo Business Blueprint and I got super inspired. So I started trying to validate this idea for an instructional DVD on how to make your own hamster clothing. (SHUT UP!) But now I’m getting lost and I need direction. Help please!
So this is what I’ve done so far:
-checked out the market size
Global monthly searches for “hamster”:16,600,000!! with nobody
advertising against it!!!
Estimated Reach on Facebook Ads for hamsters: 338,640 people
Estimated cost to buy and maintain a hamster: 75 initial + 20 per month!
Estimated market 20 x 338,640 = 6,772,800 per month if potential!!!!!!
-I made a landing page with a sign up form and started trying to drive traffic to it by talking to people on hamster blogs.
No one’s signing up for my list!
Is it time to ditch or get really extreme about talking to people?
I dunno, I can’t think when my tumor’s itching.
Any feedback?
Marcus Kim
Sergio Rivas — March 4th, 2012, 9:10 am
Hey Marcus,
I think you came across an amazing niche opportunity! Don’t give up! It could be that people aren’t interested in making hamster clothing. I would say you should explore three ideas of hamster owner target marketing then see what bites.
Josh — January 25th, 2012, 9:39 am
Update from my weekend launch post.
Since my launch I’ve continued to push forward on this business. I’ve been selling units, mostly through my personal network but a few from google adwords.
To date here is what I’ve done moving it forward and what tools i’ve been using.
I’ve used Elance to have a PE design my circuit, then bid the manufacturing of this circuit out on alibaba. Using alibaba I’ve found a solar panel manufacturer to build cells to my specific specs. I’ve used 99design to hire a graphic artist to design my logo and she is currently designing me a t-shirt that I will give free to any customer who takes a pic of them using their charger and posts it on facebook along with a short story of where they were when they took the pic.
Also through Elance I’ve hired a writer from Australia to help me with content for onsite and off-site. I am evaluating VA’s on Elance and Odesk to help me with some slow white hat backlink building.
I am still doing the final product assembly myself, with a plan to outsource when I reach a certain sales number, then I will begin evaluating outsourcing my fulfillment.
Here’s what I’ve learned: researching market size and competition – easy, building prototypes and product development – easy, researching manufacturing and sourcing – easy, building online presence – tough and time consuming (when weeding through all the “sales pitches” from get rich quick and easy shysters), MARKETING – hardest. I will admit this is not what I though it would be when I started.
Thanks Tim and Noah for so much inspiration!
Josh
Brad Mills — July 23rd, 2012, 1:31 am
Got an update since January?
Chris — March 7th, 2012, 12:27 pm
If you have an idea for an app, is it necessary to patent your application? The process is long and very expensive.
Nowadays there are so many claims for patent/copyright infringement, so I wonder if patenting is a worthwhile measure of protection (to some degree; obviously there are so many overlaps in patents that there is no guarantee that you will be protected).
Sheyi — March 21st, 2012, 6:00 am
I just have to bookmark this and come back to read again.
Reading this post stops me from making a new blog post on my blog. cause its not as detailed as this blog post is and since i wanna be the best, i must dig more and bring out the best too.
Sheyi
Jer — April 4th, 2012, 9:20 pm
Thanks for sharing the knowledge and insights
Earl — June 2nd, 2012, 11:37 am
How does selling 200 copies of imgur validate appsumo, which has nothing to do with image hosting?
tyler — June 6th, 2012, 9:12 am
“Wantrepreneur”!!! Awesome! Great post
The Arbitor — June 10th, 2012, 12:31 am
love this….i can smell my first mill.
Melanie — June 13th, 2012, 11:58 am
Wow. I went from having Zero muse ideas to 25 (and counting). Idea overload. I’m trying to weed through them, find the first gem.
Richard — July 1st, 2012, 2:29 am
This is a great post. Just stumbled on it. Thanks guys.
Anonymous — July 17th, 2012, 7:05 am
I do accept as true with all the concepts you have introduced for your post. They’re very convincing and can definitely work. Still, the posts are very brief for starters. Could you please lengthen them a bit from next time? Thanks for the post.
RobD — July 22nd, 2012, 4:38 pm
What all of you gushing posters above me should really be paying attention to is the way Noah wrote this post. That’s why it was so good… nothing new here. He simply communicated effectively..IE: Sales Copy.
I’m not talking smack… it was a great write up and I’m glad people are able draw inspiration from it. All I’m saying is don’t miss the forest for the trees. Learn to write and communicate as effectively as Noah just did and your golden.
Brad Mills — July 23rd, 2012, 1:29 am
“All you need to do is set up a sales page using Unbounce or WordPress, create a few ads to run on Google and/or Facebook, then evaluate your conversion rate for ad-clicks and collecting email addresses.”
This was what I came here looking for some more info on… the setup to this nugget was great ok but THIS is the meat that requires moar words.
The link to “The New Sales Page” was not super helpful for creating validation landing pages, that design he dissected was not a validation landing page that you can build in a few hours, but a fine tuned conversion monster that Noah & team split tested and perfected during the first year of App Sumo.
Does anyone have any guides or links for best practices on this specific strategy of creating validation landing pages through unbounce or wordpress? For this process I’d like to get some best practices tips on:
1) Layout for the sales page (use a long sales letter or less copy? have a video? how many pages? What if you’re selling a product like coffee?)
2) Tools to help (wordpress sales page plugins, unbounce themes, etc)
3) Types of ads to run in google adwords and facebook ads (example of high converting headlines?)
If App Sumo has done a course on this, I’d buy it right now … anyone know if there’s a course available for rapid prototyping and validating through this sales page / PPC method?
fashion — August 1st, 2012, 7:35 pm
Hi there! This post could not be written much better! Looking through this post reminds me of my previous roommate!
He always kept preaching about this. I am going to forward this article to
him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Many thanks for sharing!
lenin — August 5th, 2012, 4:54 am
amazing post. well done
Christian Ward — August 8th, 2012, 7:50 am
What an inspiring post! it makes me want to take action asap
Jessica — August 18th, 2012, 1:35 pm
I love this post thanks for sharing I have currently seen a lot of growth in my company which is a online community for parents and I just started in June of 2012 and already I have had over 1,000 unique people that visit my site a each week to me that speaks volume! To start up a site in June and then work so hard and have that type of volume I am very proud of my self. Trust me it’s not easy I have been busting my butt to make it happen so to everyone that post on this blog stay encouraged because the battle is not hard you just have to keep trying !
Frank — August 20th, 2012, 1:39 am
Hi Tim ,
everytime i come back to your blog i learn a lot , thank you
This post about Noah biz style is really great and open up my mind on a different angle , related to start a new biz .
What can i say ? GREAT , GREAT , GREAT , keep up the good job
i will be back for more.
Regards
Frank Moreno
Terry Kyle — August 25th, 2012, 12:28 am
Awesome share and detail from someone who has actually done it, rather than just business philosophy and theory. Hopefully, readers of this post will appreciate just how valuable this information is and act on it. Kudos.
Matthew Hunt — August 26th, 2012, 8:09 pm
Wow! Amazing and inspiring post! Can’t believe some of those ideas were cooked up in a weekend. As they say, KISS. It’s inspired me to simplify my processes. Almost at my 1,000,000 business. Took me a little longer. 3 years, but nonetheless got there.
RC — August 29th, 2012, 7:41 am
This Noah guy really inspired me !!! FANTASTIC POST ! Will most certainly put my ideas to good use from here on out
David — August 29th, 2012, 7:58 am
Incredibly inspiring and valuable post. My mind is buzzing
Xena — September 5th, 2012, 8:39 pm
It is a little late to join this contest but I was disappointing on why I didn’t find this blog last year. I started my artificial flower business following the Craigslist idea. Basically I posted some ads on Craigslist of flower arrangement I made. People ordered! Then I asked my husband to build a shopping cart site around the idea. I had not spent a dime on ads yet but look like it will be my next step! Thanks so much on the Google/Facebook data points…
paula — October 7th, 2012, 8:33 am
I was wondering if I am going to advertise on FB and choose the Cost per thousand views options , how much will it cost when people click on my ad?
BMP — January 9th, 2013, 8:34 am
This is one of the best posts/articles I’ve read about starting a profitable business, ever. Really valuable info presented in the clearest, most engaging way. Inspiring.
Stan — February 7th, 2013, 8:20 am
This is a very intellectual article. Also, this is one post where (I feel) all the comments/suggestions are gold too.
I printed this whole post out for fear of loosing it due to technical reasons. Challenge to myself: post another comment here after I have applied this knowledge.
louisa fireragon — February 11th, 2013, 11:09 am
LinkedIn Q& A is not available anymore, amazon.com does not provide bestseller lists outside U.S.
lolol — February 26th, 2013, 12:52 pm
I made my own paper
Dax Hoover — March 12th, 2013, 3:41 pm
I have an idea that I know would make over a million dollars. The problem is when I look for someone to talk to about it, it leads to the same place which is where in the hell do I start. How do I reach someone that will listen to my idea real quick and point me in the right direction or even move forward with me on the idea. My other problem is, no money. My restaurant Garlic & Shots in Tempe didnt make it. Ran out of money and I spent my life savings over, 350,000$ because I got robbed by a swindler. Any advice on who to talk to. My project can be an app, streamlined on the web, it could be a tv show. There isn’t anything like it out there and potential customer base could easily in the millions. It covers a need that can change the way apps etc…will be looked at and it would be the first one to set the playing field for the future. Thank you to someone who hopefully is out there and is hopefully actually took the time to read. Thank you!
Hj — March 15th, 2013, 3:25 pm
Hello Dax Hoover! I’m sorry you were swindled. It’s happened to me as well, a time or two, over the past several decades. I would be interested in looking at your idea(s) and hopefully seeing a potential match for putting something together for the both of us. Aloha, Hj
GL — April 5th, 2013, 10:15 am
I will give you a ring today @ Carmen’s
say 11 am your time. If not there, I will leave you my number. Thx GL
GL — April 2nd, 2013, 4:56 pm
Hi Dax-
I too have been burned. My father told me it is one of those unfortunate lessons life always has to teach. I certainly am stronger though a touch poorer for it
I am a serial entrepreneur who is currently searching for his next focus. I have an idea that I am currently mapping out. I also would have interest in hearing your idea. I was once told by someone I truly respect that you should not fear sharing an idea as chances are 50 other people also have it. It can only help to talk and who knows maybe we could do something together. We could even get HJ in the mix 
Cheers! GL
Dax Hoover — April 3rd, 2013, 3:53 pm
That would be awesome! How should I get in touch with you guys?
GL — April 9th, 2013, 4:42 pm
Appears I accidentally responded to HJs post so you never saw my response. I have called a couple of times@ Carmens but you have not been there. I am away for about 10 days and we can work to coordinate when I get back. Thx GL
Lisa — March 26th, 2013, 8:56 am
Very clear and concise information . Step by step workable solutions on how to start, build and test business potential. Love the article. Perhaps ,if there are any updates or revisions , he should include those. Great stuff.
Leandro — March 27th, 2013, 11:45 am
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I truly appreciate your efforts and I will be waiting for your further write ups thanks
once again.
Steffen — April 6th, 2013, 10:05 am
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit
my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again.
Anyhow, just wanted to say great blog!
Fernando — April 6th, 2013, 11:37 am
One of the best ever articles I read on Four Hour Work Week Blog. The practical information and steps Noah Kagan, CEO of AppSumo gives you will help you build a business of any scale. This is the second time I read this article and going for new experimentation to test one services I’ve thinking for sometime.
Finally I have to say this is one of the most valuable posts I’ve seen on practical advice for BUSINESS STARTUPS.
Kwadwo — April 23rd, 2013, 9:43 am
This is a great read and a great motivator. I created a small start-up about ten years ago (it didn’t work out). I’m going to get started on my second start-up today.
Thanks, ill keep you posted.
Kwadwo Asare…..
Ralf — April 26th, 2013, 1:33 am
Howdy! This post could not be written much better! Going through
this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He constantly kept talking about this.
I’ll send this post to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing!
James Akamaguna — April 28th, 2013, 8:16 pm
Insightful. Wish I read this at the beginning of the year, would have saved me months of second guessing. Anyway, sometimes we learn more by failing. Thanks for the guidelines.
Chris Franklin — May 15th, 2013, 1:35 am
Tim,
I am a student of yours who some time ago purchased your book the 4 hour work week and put it down when I was maybe a chapter in ( I just hadn’t had the intelligence to fully grasp what you were saying at the time). Since that time I have had a multitude of jobs in many diverse and various fields. I always fought that thought in my head “you’ll reach the top in anything you do, just pick something and stick to it”.
The voice in my head was right, I will always rise to the top but the second part of that thought was opposed by the expression “diversity is the key to life”. You see, It was important for me to experience many types of careers to get a understanding of a broader picture. To have perspective from different angles. Perspective one does not gain from just picking something and sticking to it.
I remember hearing you on the Joe Rogan podcast, not recognizing your name from a book I had purchased and not read. Your outlook felt so familiar. Like something I had herd as a child that resonated in my psyche. I feel like now is the time I can better understand and comprehend the knowledge you so generously pass on.
I am trying to keep this short, what I am asking of you is a favor. Circumstances in my life have brought me to this serendipitous moment where clarity has shown itself on my horizon. I have moved to Beaverton, Oregon leaving my life in Southern California to help my wife pursue her dreams and finish school so that she may become a physicians assistant.
I told her, on one condition! We move near nike headquarters so I can run their track. I had no idea what the portland area had in store for me. I just knew that if times were good or bad I can find my bliss, my life’s balance running that track. We have been up here for a little over two weeks now and of course I have been looking for jobs at nike. Not really knowing where I would fit in and just last week I found it.
The nike “EKIN”! A position that utilizes all my talents but will also allow me to grow in ways I couldn’t even imagine before. My philosophies align and my imagination soars with the amount I can contribute to this position and beyond it.
I ask as your student to endorse me, recommend me, do what you can do to help me reach this launching pad for which I can take off. It would be my deepest and most sincere gratitude, of which you have already earned.
I’m writing this open letter with a thank you for what you have already done for my life, in hope that there is more in-store.
Thank you,
Chris Franklin
Sonia — May 16th, 2013, 4:32 pm
I came across this blog by Googling The effects of LSD on creativity
. Expected it to be a “junkie” forum/blog and as I kept reading the posts it become evident that it is a kind of “junkie” blog 
. So many people getting high on how easy and simple it is to make money…lots of money with little downtime and effort…if you just know how. I felt i had to make a comment 
As a general rule there is no fast and easy money. Of course there are exception to rules and it seems most are used as case studies here. In reality to make it in the online business at this day and age you have to be smart above average like this guy Hogan. Unfortunetly, judging by the posts, most people aren’t. How many of you would think to offer money to bring someone else clients? The standard thinking is to cold email and ask for a commission…but who pays attention to cold emails these days. Its little things like that which matter and most of us do not have that kind of thinking. To make it you need to be smart and/or lucky. Do a simple fact mathematics. There are probably over 100million people trying to make money online and not so many profitable ideas out there. Although the internet market seems to be big it really isnt…..its actually just the western countries spending money online but people from all over the world compete for them. There has never been so much competition in the hstory of the world and brains and luck had never played such a big role as now. Give it a shot, and when it does not work try something offline..you got bigger chances there.
Jordan Phoenix — May 18th, 2013, 3:50 am
This is like Lean Startup in one page. Awesome.