Productivity Made Simple was launched last Friday and whilst the sales letter and upsell offer converted very well, the product simply failed to attract a lot of traffic or attention in the market place.
The product was about the fact that knowledge doesn’t change results unless you take action on it. We show our customers how to put in place strategies for taking more action in order to get better results!
Whilst we have made a bunch of sales, the revenue returns are simply not enough to compensate for the amount of effort that we put into this product. We priced this product low and gave away most of the revenue to affiliates to entice them to promote for us.
Whilst Productivity Made Simple has some great content within it, most people buying info products are looking for a ‘quick fix’ rather than ‘climbing the steep hill’ of building a real business.
This is a big learning point.
I have had a tendency to try to over-deliver. Whilst this is a commendable trait it also has certain drawbacks:
- it takes me longer to create and launch the product
- the products become too big which makes them harder to consume
- the product needs to match the price – I can’t sell content for $7 that others sell for $97 or $297 – this a fast way to go out of business. (It also, reflects on the perceived quality of the product.)
I also have a tendency to help others without asking for payment. Again a commendable trait but it slows me up with my own work. For example, I spent 2 hours on Saturday trying to help a friend to fix his sales funnel.
Creating ‘Productivity Made Simple’ got me thinking about my own productivity. To speed up I need to:
- create one problem, one solution at one sitting type of products
- that take about an hour to consume
- with a very simple funnel
- and a simplified delivery system (we have been using Optimize Press 2 – whilst it creates a lovely looking site it is very slow to work with!)
- the whole process of product creation needs to be systemized and templatised.
- maintain focused on my own work.
The other critical factor in product creation is support. The support desk can be a significant time-suck, particularly if there are technical problems. The more complex the product is, the more support tickets you can expect which is another argument in favour of simplicity.
We also need to be surveying the market to find out what the market wants. For example, video products are currently very popular as recently video type products have been on JVZoo’s best-seller list.
Shakespeare said:
[boxibt style=”gray”]“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.” [/boxibt]
Only by taking action and failing many times do we ultimately learn our craft.
The positives to be taken from Productivity Made Simple are:
- more careful planning is required – to scope the product, research the market place and to keep the product focused i.e. to avoid scope creep.
- a system for product launches is required so that ultimately some of the work can be safely outsourced and to increase productivity
- we actually completed and launched the product – the product is available as a bonus for other products etc.
- I learned that there is smart and effective productivity and how easy it is to become a ‘busy fool’!
I am pleased about the quality of the Productivity Made Simple product that we created but it took us a month to create which was really far to long so I take this thought into creating our next product on sales funnels.
As Henry Ford said – ‘Failure is just an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’ We didn’t exactly fail with Productivity Made Simple but it is now time to begin again more intelligently!