Is That Light at the End of the Tunnel?!

The unit is almost finished. I found someone on Craigslist to do the cabinets, the floors, a tile backsplash, and the bathroom ceiling for $700. You can't beat that. Hopefully everything will be finished by the end of the week and I will be able to start looking for a tenant.

Next month is big.

I'm going to try to pull off a monsterous upset. In the tradition of the 30 Day Challenge I am going to go from zero to two marketable products within the 31 days of July. I think I can pull it off. If so, that will place me as the owner of 3 information products. Looking at the results of Product #1, adding 2 more to the mix will have a substantial effect on my monthly earnings. I have a specific goal for the number of products I would like to have by year's end but I will not be divulging that info just yet.

2007 - I create the products and gain a foothold for Product #1.
2008 - I focus all efforts on becoming the dominant player in each of the markets I have products in.

If all goes well, I will document my progress here. Updates lately have been few and far between but hopefully I will be able to work on that a bit.

As for Dave's question, I use Profollow. It is the same as Aweber but it is the private label version owned by Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula fame.

Edit: Thanks for the catch, Dave. Yes, it is actually Jeff Walker and not Jeff Johnson. My bad=)

Prepping a Unit SUCKS!

I've been away a while because I have been getting the other unit in my duplex into rentable condition. The last tenants were filthy and left the place in horrible shape. I worked all last week and this weekend and still haven't finished.

By focusing on the duplex, I have let the Business slip and it shows. Sales have slowed tremendously and I haven't had the time to implement some major traffic boosters that I had planned. It is very frustrating. Next time, I will set aside $1000 and just pay someone to fix the place up. My time is far too valuable to spend it cleaning and painting.

Real Estate Adventures

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but real estate has been rough this month. The tenant broke the lease and abandonded the property in terrible condition. Then Monday one of my big trees in the front yard fell. I really liked that tree.

Well yesterday a friend and I borrowed a couple of chainsaws and went to work. We made short work of the tree. All 40+ ft of it. Now I need to paint the unit, replace the filthy carpets with tile, replace the mildewed and nasty refridgerator, get a new oven, and hopefully have enough money left over to replace the cabinents.

The good news is that by leaving the tenant has given me the opportunity to raise the rents a lot more than I could if he had stayed. I'm shooting for $860/month.

Product is doing very well. It is #1 in popularity, gravity, and commission payout in its category. Affiliates are flocking to it and making sales nearly everyday.

3 more products by year's end=)

Results of the Special

I believe I mentioned the discount I was offering my list. If they bought my JV partner's product, I would give them 30% off of mine. Well, the special was a success. In the 3 days the special was running I generated:

May 30 - $85.79
May 31 - $54.46
June 1 - $112.49

Total - $252.74

Since this special was directed at my list, there were no ad costs associated with it. All profit. Now some of the sales during the day were generated by affiliates but the majority for those 3 days were people from my list.

After seeing the results of the special, I went over to Rentacoder to find a programmer. They will be creating my script that will provide a 3 day deal just like I broadcast to the list. The difference this time around is that it will be in the autoresponder so every new sign up will see it eventually.

In the last post I mentioned it would be hard not to make $100/day if you had at least 4 quality products, lists, affiliates, and JV partners for each. By year's end I will have a total of 4 quality products.

JonnyQ Special: The Power of Affiliates, 6/1/07

This is just a short update. I just had to post this though.

May was the best month for my product yet! The kicker (as they say)? I only made sales in the last 12 days of the month!

The difference was having affiliates work for me. Everything we work so hard to do as affiliates is multiplied when you become the merchant. It is like having colony of ants going out and bringing back food. I can not stress enough the importance of having affiliates if you own a product or products. They are invaluable.

The next thing I did differently was start getting into JVs. I thought it was a lot of marketing "guru" nonsense but it is powerful. The one JV I did scored the majority of my sales for the month. The JV also shifted my focus away from just selling my own product. Doing so added another $100 or so of pure profit to the bottom line.

Both the JV and the affiliate provided the traffic levels and warmed up visitors I needed in order to do some real split testing. This split testing will eventually create a salesletter that is incredibly persuasive with a high conversion rate.

Finally, the past 2 weeks showed me something that is equally powerful. If you own multiple (4 or more) QUALITY products in different niches with high search numbers, a quality site with backend products, affiliates promoting each one, JV deals in place, and an email list, it would be hard not to make $100/day. Read that again if you need to.