Making money from an idea before you even build it.
How I pre-sold 8 copies of a book I hadn't even started writing yet and how you can do to do it too.
For years now I've been making bold claims about grand business ideas that I'm sure would take off. First it was marketing consulting, then information products (video courses and the like), followed by tapping into the mobile game rush.
It was actually the mobile game company that gave some hope of taking off. The first iOS title I created, “Penguin Jumper”, doubled my investment within the first 60 days. But it just wasn't a sustainable business for me in my financial situation at the time, nor was it enough for me to re-invest into the business to make new games and grow the company. Not at the time anyway (nor as I write this, either).
I've made countless websites, landing pages, videos and blogs to try and sell my expertise and products. Looking back they were all destined to fail one way or another. Either the product wasn't something the market cared about or my value proposition was too weak to bother noticing.
After working at several companies putting together digital marketing strategies over the last few years, I figured it was time to try again. After doing some research and studying through old PDF’s and bookmarks I re-discovered a startup method used by Noah Kagan of AppSumo.
The short story is this: you can validate a business idea by generating pre-sales before you even begin creating your product or service. It sounds counter-intuitive but it seemed to have worked for others who built really successful businesses in the same way, and as the only risk I would face this time was simply rejection as opposed to loss of my own money I figured it was a no-brainer.
The challenge was this: pick an idea and validate it by getting at least 3 pre-sales in 48 hours. After a bit of preparation I decided it was go time. The first idea? “Marketing Recipes”.
I messaged some business owners on LinkedIn and emailed a few others I've worked with in previous lives. I got my first sale from Greg, a business owner I helped out a couple of summers ago. So far so good. I then took to Reddit and aimed to get some feedback. Some of it good, some of it bad. But no one was handing their money over.
After more than 48 hours I decided this idea was a failure, so I decided to get specific and focused on the eCommerce industry, emailing a few online retail store owners to see what their pains were when running their business and figured if I could build a solution around these pains then it was sure to validate itself.
I guess they were all too busy to respond and the idea failed before it even begun. Back to the drawing board.
My thought processes drifted back to a few months ago when my best friend and I were putting the world to rights at a house party, as we usually do. He began telling me about how impressed he was with the way I got myself out of a crappy IT job and into a digital marketing career so quickly. It was like it happened overnight.
I thought back to this and saw an opportunity, so I decided to sell my “Dream Job” workshop to a few friends that I knew were somewhat unhappy in their current roles. It was looking good, too. They were pretty interested and thought it was a great idea. So I set up an event on Eventbrite and asked them to pay up.
I must have said something funny as that night I got mocked on a group chat we had going on Facebook while they were out drinking beers, referring to an interview they found of me on YouTube while I was working for a SaaS company. I didn't bother trying to sell this to anyone else, cancelled the Eventbrite event and wound down for the weekend, putting this whole thing as far back into my mind as possible.
The following week I got a second wind and thought of a great idea for a book that really excited me. I was feeling gutsy and didn't bother drilling down into a niche - my target market would simply be business owners and entrepreneurs who wanted to learn how to promote their companies with Digital Marketing systems that they could build themselves. So I sent out a bunch of emails and promoted the idea in a Facebook group I was a member of, naming the book “The Definitive Guide to Digital Marketing”.
I let this brew for awhile and came back to check the response. Before I knew it I had three orders come in to my PayPal account from old contacts on my email list and around 8 people on the Facebook group raise their hand in interest, using phrases like “definitely interested” and “great idea”. Of those 8, 5 of them actually pre-ordered the book.
In less than 48 hours I received 8 orders for a book I hadn't even made yet, and although it’s not an amazingly impressive number the effort I put in to acquiring those orders was pretty reflective.
It was possible to keep going with the pre-selling process, as I calculated that I could probably hit around 30 pre-sales easily by the weekend. I was told, however, that this would be a bad idea and that I should begin writing the book and fulfil the orders, which is where I am now.
I've written 3 chapters so far and sent my “validatees” a preview copy, albeit quite a ghetto version, that has received a lot of good feedback. This was the encouragement I needed to keep going and finish what I've started.
Since then I've also given a handful of these validatees a free consultation, and one of them is looking likely to turn into a paying client. Not only have I validated a business idea but I also made some money by doing so, giving me the confidence to carry on and know that I'm not wasting my time writing a book nobody wants.
A few other lessons have come from this experience: the first is that selling your idea to the right people is so important, as it’s absolutely futile to offer something to people who are not motivated to take action. It’s much easier to find a “message-to-market match” than to try and sell something to the wrong people, which reminds me of a quote from my favourite book “Zorba The Greek”:
You can knock on a deaf man’s door forever.
Another lesson is this: no matter how many times you fail, as long as you keep going you’ll find something that works. Everything you try will simply act as a lesson that you can use to course correct for next time. You’ll also learn that one opportunity will open up into several others as I discovered with the prospect of gaining a consulting client.
The great thing about this is that you’ll build a real business. I now have a list of buyers, albeit small, that are interested in my message and what I have to say. These people will help guide the way for future products and will also be incredibly valuable when I want to promote the book when it’s launched.
In the meantime I can use my own expertise and set up a pre-launch funnel to start building another list of people who are interested in the book for when it becomes available. I'm currently using LaunchRock to do this, driving traffic through my Twitter account and other channels. I’ll be reporting back on this in a future article.
If you have an idea for a business but feel against taking the plunge in an outdated and “traditional” manner then try this method of testing and validating it first. The worst that can happen is people will ignore you, say no and generally try and bruise your ego. Let failure happen because failure is GOOD and will lead to greater things that will make for an awesome future for all of us.
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